Some good news came out of Slippery Rock University last week as the school announced it was adding a new health care-centered college to its offerings.

The College of Health Professions is likely to debut no later than fall 2022 and will primarily be made up of existing academic departments in SRU’s College of Health, Engineering and Science.

John Bonaguro, the founding dean of the new college, said that while the Health Professions school does not correlate with the addition of new academic programs, its benefit will be that it will unify different health-related academic programs in one place, making the program more visible and cost effective.

“This means more efficient administration where you would otherwise have many separate departments,” said Bonaguro, who noted the program would also provide better advising, articulation agreements, affiliations and other benefits that wouldn’t be available without the existing departments being centralized in the new program.

SRU’s new college comes at an obviously significant moment. The health care needs of residents across the county, state and nation have changed during the past year as the coronavirus pandemic ravaged communities.

On top of that, health care leaders have expressed concerns over a nationwide nursing shortage that the chief nursing officer and vice president of UPMC Passavant’s Patient Care Services recently described to the Eagle as “grave.”

Recent studies have shown that the average age of nurses has increased. As many older nurses retire, they are leaving schools without a pipeline of teachers to take their place, and in recent years thousands of qualified nursing applicants have been turned away from programs due to a lack of qualified faculty and other resources. Therefore, fewer nursing graduates have joined the workforce.

If combining some of its existing academic departments in a new college at SRU will lead to resources being more centralized and leadership being more concentrated, and — as a result — help to draw more students into nursing or other health care professions, then this is a great initiative.

William Behre, SRU’s president, said the establishment of the new college will give the university “even more of a foothold in the region and strengthens the recognition of SRU as a leader in preparing students for health care jobs that are in demand.”

Sounds good to us. Congratulations to SRU on the establishment of the College of Health Professions and to the students who will benefit from it.

— NCD