In the next few weeks, you will be receiving the IHP winter magazine. In my letter, I express that during this time of the COVID pandemic, the IHP is continuing to do the essential work to provide our students with an exemplary educational experience. At the same time, we have not stopped innovating and creating new models of education, growing our research enterprise, and developing new approaches to improving racial justice on campus and in our communities. You will read about some of these stories in the magazine but there is so much more to share.
The essential work of educating our exceptional students to provide leadership in health care has continued unabated. All of our programs provide most of their education online and spend some time on campus for clinical educational experiences that are best provided in person. Our faculty have thought critically about their curricula and expertly designed a model that meets the educational needs of the students while protecting our community. Our faculty and staff have worked tirelessly to get students the clinical experiences they need to complete their programs. The result is that almost all of our students will be graduating on time in August, and fully prepared to join a health care community that desperately needs their leadership.
One measure of our continued programmatic success is that our pass rates on licensure exams remains outstanding. Two examples: Last fall, the ABSN pass rate on the NCLEX was over 98% for first-time test takers, the highest for the School of Nursing. This spring, the PT program’s initial cohort of NPTE first-time exam takers have a 91.2% pass rate. All of this is evidence of our ability to provide and exceptional educational experiences in the face of one the most challenging times in the history of higher education.
One might think that during this pandemic, we would be satisfied with the excellence described above and pause our innovations related to the future of health care education, the development of knowledge, and in creating a just and equitable IHP. That is not at all the case. We continue our bold educational innovations in the development of a new School of Health Care Leadership with new master’s programs of study in digital analytics and health care leadership and management. In addition, recognizing the importance of lifelong learning for our alumni and all health professionals, we are expanding the scope of work in the Continuing Professional Development Office. We are also developing new models of clinical education and transforming the ways health professions clinical education will be delivered in the future. All of this work continued in earnest and progressed during the pandemic.
One of the bright lights in this pandemic has been the ability to continue and expand much of our research work being done by our faculty and our students. Our research portfolio continues to grow, and the number of research grants submitted by new investigators is an indication of our future growth. Our contributions to shaping health care through research is critical.
In July of 2019, we launched the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and hired Dr. Kimberly Truong to be its inaugural Executive Director. Her work began pre-Covid but has expanded during the pandemic. Her office of one grew to two and is now a staff of four people helping each of us focus on both the organizational issues that impact our goal of creating an IHP free from bias and discrimination and developing a curriculum that supports student learning about issues of structural racism and inequities in health care. We recognize our goals will not be achieved quickly but we are committed to the work and measuring ourselves against defined goals.
And our community members continue to be recognized for this work. In the fall of 2019, Gayun Chan-Smutko, associate program director of Genetic Counseling, was among the inaugural recipients of National Society of Genetic Counselors Leadership for demonstrating leadership and/or exemplary achievements in dedication to diversity and inclusion efforts within the genetic counseling profession. And on February 26, nursing faculty Dr. Clara Gona, Dr. Abraham Ndiwane, Dr. Tomisin Olayinka, Prof. Kenya Palmer, Dr. Eleonor Pusey-Reid, and Dr. Kaveri Roy received the Leadership Award from the New England Regional Black Nurses Association for their work in helping the SON confirm its commitment to justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion. Our diversity and inclusion work continues, and we have the leadership in our community at the IHP who can help us be successful in making change.
This is just a small sample of the excitement that is all around us at the IHP and we look forward to a time when we safely can be together to celebrate all of these accomplishments. In the meantime, the work continues.