The largest philanthropic grant in UC Davis history was announced Tuesday when the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation committed $100 million to the campus to launch the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing.

The grant will help found a professional nursing school on the Sacramento campus that emphasizes leadership, scientific rigor and multidisciplinary training. The goal is to graduate nurse leaders, educators and researchers who will make positive, long-term systemic impacts to health care in California and throughout the nation.

"This is just incredible, such an exciting time for UC Davis, a historic moment…Nursing is a perfect fit for UC Davis and our public service traditions. We are going to be so proud to be able to add nursing to what we do," said Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef, speaking before a surprised crowd of 200 people — including many UC Davis nurses and medical students — gathered outside the new medical education building in Sacramento.

The donation, to be allocated over 11 years, is one of the largest in the history of the University of California. It is also the largest philanthropic contribution in the nation in support of nursing education.

Pending approvals from the Academic Senate, the UC Board of Regents, the Board of Registered Nursing, the California Postsecondary Education Commission and other entities, UC Davis anticipates admitting its first students in master's and doctorate programs to the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing in the fall of 2008, the year the campus celebrates its centennial. Once all students are enrolled, the school is expected to serve 456 students.

"Today's announcement is about investing in future nurse leaders," said Ed Penhoet, president of the San Francisco-based Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. "UC Davis and the foundation share a vision to face our nation's health care problems by integrating the best of health care and scientific practices with multiple disciplines in higher education for nurses….We spent a lot of time looking at a number of other organizations who want to create nursing schools in California, and we are extremely pleased that UC Davis emerged as the best partner for us in this enterprise. We are confident that UC Davis will ensure that the most comprehensive training will be provided to students and significantly advance nursing research."

The school will bear the name of Betty Irene Moore, who with her husband established the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation in 2000. With an endowment of $5.7 billion, the foundation is the nation's 10th largest.

'A first step'

Betty Irene Moore is an advocate for patient safety, quality nursing care and education and is the impetus behind the foundation's Betty Irene Moore Nursing Initiative. Gordon Moore is the co-founder, past CEO and chairman emeritus of Intel Corp. A chemist and physicist, Gordon Moore is most widely known for "Moore's Law," the guiding principle for predicting the delivery of more powerful computer chips for semiconductors.

"We are most grateful to the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation for partnering with UC Davis. This is a first step," said the chancellor, who noted the announcement was personal for him because his mother had been a nurse. "We are honored that the school will bear Betty Irene Moore's name. We share her personal interest in improving the outcomes of patient care for everyone. Her passion matches our own tradition of serving the public and our desire to make health care safer and more accessible."

The Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing is intended to leverage the campus' existing professional schools of medicine, veterinary medicine, law, business and education.

Public health school

The campus also continues to actively pursue the creation of a professional School of Public Health, which is currently progressing through the approval process.

Plans for the nursing school include rigorous admissions standards, a curriculum that would be integrated with both UC Davis' School of Medicine and the Graduate School of Management, and residency training for bachelor's degree candidates. All degree programs would also incorporate UC Davis' expertise in biology, public health, telemedicine and health technology.

In addition to the funding from the foundation, a mix of public funding and additional philanthropic support from other donors will be required to realize the long-term vision for the school.

"We are looking forward to working with members of the nursing community and collaborating with our faculty colleagues in the Academic Senate as we develop our admission standards and curriculum to create a top-ranked nursing school," said Claire Pomeroy, UC Davis vice chancellor for human health sciences and dean of the School of Medicine. "We are excited to move forward to achieve our goal of educating the nursing leaders of the future."

Fourth UC nursing program

The nursing school is to share existing classroom and research facilities in Sacramento and Davis with the UC Davis Medical Center and UC Davis School of Medicine. The school would be the fourth professional nursing program in the University of California system, joining schools of nursing at UCLA and UC San Francisco, and a nursing program at UC Irvine.

"There is a need for at least one more, highly-focused, research-intensive school of nursing in California. UC Davis is the perfect place for that confluence of forces to meet…this extraordinary need for the people of California," Rory Hume, UC system provost and executive vice president for health affairs, told the crowd in ecstatic closing remarks.

"California needs nursing leaders," he added. "It needs more nursing faculty. This is a phenomenal shot in the arm for our contributions to this great social need."

Hume cited a recent University of California study on state education needs in the health care professions that identified "first and foremost" the need to train more nursing faculty in the state. Legislators and other opinion leaders are also calling for an expansion in the number of nurse educators in California, where thousands of qualified applicants are denied entry into nursing education programs due to a lack of faculty to teach them.

'World-class dean and faculty'

The leader of the UC Davis team working to establish the school of nursing, School of Medicine Executive Associate Dean Ann Bonham, said the campus is ready to move the effort forward.

"With this support, we will begin immediately to recruit a world-class dean and faculty committed to preparing future nurses to lead inter-professional teams in an increasingly complex and ever-changing health care system," Bonham said. "We will also make it a top priority in the days and weeks ahead to identify partners who share this wonderful vision of a new and innovative school of nursing — a vision first articulated by Betty Irene Moore."

More information

For a webcast of the announcement event, a fact sheet and more information, see www.ucdavis.edu and www.moore.org.