Port St. Lucie - Tuesday August 8, 2023: Indian River State College (IRSC) celebrated the opening of its expanded school of nursing this morning at its Pruitt Campus in Port St. Lucie. Business and political leaders from throughout the region joined IRSC faculty and staff to mark the occasion.
The new facility doubles the capacity of the IRSC nursing program and will help address the state's nursing shortage. The current class is about 120 nursing students. School officials say the goal is to graduate more than 320 nurses by 2025.
"Our community here needs nurses," said Patricia Gagliano, Dean of the Nursing School. "We know that there is a nursing shortage, and the facility here removes the boundaries of capacity within the school of nursing so we can take in more students."
The twelve-thousand plus square foot facility includes state of the art training facilities with simulated labor, surgical and ER rooms that provide students with a real-life educational experience. The expanded facility was funded with more than $13-million in funds from the IRSC Foundation and the state of Florida.
IRSC President Dr. Timothy Moore credited State Senator Gayle Harrell with getting the ball rolling on expanding the IRSC nursing program when she met with him two years ago to talk about the state's nursing shortage. "I admire you Ma'am, your tenacity, your grit," said Dr. Moore to Senator Harrell. "You were there, and you said 'What are you going to do about nursing, we have a shortfall, you need to do something.'"
Dr. Moore also cited the help of MacKenzie Scott's $45-million endowment. "So that's when I hit my team, my Provost, my CFO, my Dean of Nursing, and said 'I've got an idea, I want to double the size of nursing ...and here we are."
"This is just the beginning," said Dr. Moore. "This is the dedicated human health sciences campus of the Treasure Coast and Okeechobee. Great things are to come. We're excited. We're going to bring them here with velocity, compassion, dedication, and never wavering on quality."