News Releases
4/24/07
KANSAS CITY— In a historic first, a nursing professor has been invested with an endowed professorship at the University of Kansas School of Nursing.
The Christine A. Hartley Centennial Professorship was funded with a $500,000 gift from alumna Christine Hartley and her husband, Ross Hartley, to celebrate the School’s 100th Anniversary in 2006. Professor Judith J. Warren, PhD, RN, FAAN, FACMI, director of Nursing Informatics in the KUMC Center for Healthcare Informatics, was invested with the professorship.
“We hope this will be the beginning of an era of many endowed professorships,” said Karen Miller, PhD, RN, FAAN, senior vice chancellor for Academic and Student Affairs and dean of the School of Nursing. “I am very grateful for the Hartley’s support of this Institution.”
The Hartleys, who live near Jackson, Wyo., have strong ties to KU. Christine Hartley is a 1973 KU School of Nursing graduate who obtained her master’s degree in 1986. She has dedicated her career to patient care and enriching the nursing profession. She is a former ICU nurse, critical care instructor for area nursing programs and co-founder of an independent consulting company. Ross Hartley is a 1974 graduate of the KU School of Law.
Dale Seuferling, President of Kansas University Endowment, said private support, such as the Hartley’s endowed professorship, was becoming increasingly valuable and in many cases a necessity for public higher education. The endowed position is one of 49 such professorships at the KU Medical Center. Endowed professorships help the Medical Center retain exemplary faculty members.
“Each time we invest a new endowed professor, we recognize a growing partnership of individuals who are creating a network of knowledge to find treatments and cures for the improved health of our citizens,” Seuferling said. “When you look at the top echelon of research universities, they all have one thing in common: they boast a high number of endowed professorships.”
Hartley, who earned her undergraduate in nursing degree in 1973 and master’s degree in 1986 from the school, decided it was time to change that.
“The timing was right, and this is an important need for the school,” said Hartley. “Ross and I felt this would be a great way to give back to an institution that has enriched so many lives.”
Endowed professorships help the medical center retain exemplary faculty members.
Warren, the first Hartley Centennial Professor, has already established herself as a nursing leader. She envisioned and developed a program that adapts electronic health records to teach students about the management of patient data, the role of patient information in clinical decision-making, and informatics competency mastery. The system is now being used by five schools of nursing, including the KU School of Nursing.
For the past 100 years, the University of Kansas School of Nursing has educated more than 6,000 nurses who provide high-quality, expert health care to the people of Kansas, the region and the nation. The School of Nursing annually enrolls nearly 500 students. Over the last several years, the school has ranked in the top 25 schools of nursing in the nation for research funding from the National Institutes of Health. The school has the largest bachelor’s and master’s degree programs and the only doctoral program in the state of Kansas. As a nationally recognized leader in Web-based education, the KU School of Nursing offers many online courses and degree programs.
KU Endowment is an independent, nonprofit organization serving as the official fund-raising and fund-management organization for the University of Kansas. Founded in 1891, KU Endowment is the first foundation of its kind at a U.S. public university and one of the largest.
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