{"id":42255,"date":"2022-02-10T00:08:52","date_gmt":"2022-02-10T00:08:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/fort-lewis-college-partners-with-university-of-colorado-to-start-nursing-program\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T09:05:56","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T09:05:56","slug":"fort-lewis-college-partners-with-university-of-colorado-to-start-nursing-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/fort-lewis-college-partners-with-university-of-colorado-to-start-nursing-program\/","title":{"rendered":"Fort Lewis College partners with University of Colorado to start nursing program"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Courtesy
Courtesy of Fort Lewis College<br><br>Fort Lewis College anticipates furloughs and layoffs to deal with a budget shortfall during the 2020-21 school year.<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

A new partnership between Fort Lewis College and the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus to develop a four-year undergraduate nursing degree program in Southwest Colorado is underway.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re thrilled to be partnering with the health care visionaries at CU Anschutz to bring this caliber of nursing education to Southwest Colorado,\u201d said Cheryl Nixon, FLC provost and vice president of academic affairs, in a news release. \u201cWe are aligned in our community-focused values, and this collaboration will leverage the unique Indigenous perspective and sense of place that FLC brings into all of our academics.\u201d<\/p>\n

FLC and the University of Colorado College of Nursing at Anschutz Medical Campus are working to develop a curriculum that combines hands-on, culturally sensitive, patient-centered health care with the latest trends in medicine, such as telehealth.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy partnering with Fort Lewis College, we are bringing world-class health care education into a highly respected liberal arts environment, optimizing the best of both environments to deliver a top-tier nursing education,\u201d said Donald M. Elliman, chancellor of the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, in the release.<\/p>\n

The Durango-based program will fuse FLC\u2019s liberal arts core with the nursing curriculum at CU Anschutz. Students will be expected to build creative and a critical-thinking foundation in STEM-focused general education courses alongside nursing courses uniquely aligned to rural, Indigenous health care perspectives.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is important for patients to experience health care from professionals who look like them, and can understand their backgrounds,\u201d said Elias Provencio-Vasquez, dean of the University of Colorado College of Nursing at Anschutz Medical Campus, in the release. \u201cExpanding the opportunity for furthering careers in nursing ensures that the students of Southwest Colorado can serve their communities and beyond.\u201d<\/p>\n

Forty-six percent of FLC\u2019s student population is Native American, and the new nursing program will be aimed at producing nurses who have a connection to Indigenous communities.<\/p>\n

The FLC and CU Anschutz partnership is funded in part by a $1 million donation from Karen Zink and Steve Short. In January 2022, Zink and her husband launched the Karen Zink Family Fund for Nursing Education Leadership. Additionally, Short, former chairman of the FLC Board of Trustees, and his wife are supporting the first student cohort with a $30,000 nursing scholarship fund.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis partnership between FLC and CU has the creative potential to change the landscape and show how health care can and should look,\u201d Zink said in the release. \u201cThis program will help prepare the nurses of the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

njohnson@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Curriculum to focus on rural and Indigenous health care perspectives<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39455,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[155,132,28,61],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-42255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-education","tag-fort-lewis-college","tag-headlines","tag-health"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42255"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85275,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42255\/revisions\/85275"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42255"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=42255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}