Dean Appointed for Quinnipiac’s School of Nursing

A veteran nursing professor and administrator has been named founding dean of the School of Nursing that Quinnipiac University is launching July 1.

Jean Lange, of Woodbridge, will help guide the transition of Quinnipiac’s nationally renowned nursing program into a school. The School of Nursing will be housed on Quinnipiac’s North Haven Campus, home to the School of Health Sciences, the School of Education and the planned School of Medicine.

Quinnipiac is establishing a School of Nursing in recognition of the ever-increasing role nurses play in health care today. In addition, the university’s two-year nurse practitioner master’s level program will transition to a three-year clinical doctorate program in Fall 2011.

“The opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration here are outstanding,” Lange said. “Few nursing schools offer the opportunity for nurses to be educated alongside a full-range of health care professionals.”

Quinnpiac’s curricula for these schools will stress collaboration, so that students gain an understanding of the full spectrum of health care disciplines and how they interrelate.

For the past 13 years, Lange has been a professor of nursing in Fairfield University’s School of Nursing, where she also served as director of the Doctor of Nursing Practice Program. Lange has also been a part-time faculty member at Yale University’s School of Nursing and an adjunct professor in Quinnipiac’s nursing program.

Lange earned a doctorate in nursing at the University of Connecticut. She earned her master’s degree from the University of California, Los Angeles, and her bachelor’s degree from Binghamton University.

Her first priority at Quinnipiac will be meeting with nursing faculty to assess their needs and goals. She said she would also like to foster more scholarly opportunities for faculty through partnerships with peer institutions and with community agencies.

“The facilities at Quinnipiac are state-of-the-art. There’s really a unique set of circumstances here,” Lange said. “We’re going to create a nationally renowned model of interprofessional educational excellence.”