Since the founding of the school in 1953, the faculty has been dedicated to advancing the science of nursing through various forms of scholarship including original research in areas such as patient safety, health promotion and disease prevention, work force development and most recently informatics. The faculty follows the dictum that research informs good teaching and successfully integrates teaching, research, and other forms of scholarship.

Faculty of the School of Nursing focus their research in a number of areas; Self in Relation to Health, Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, Informatics and Patient Data Systems, and Patient Safety. Research efforts are directed toward improving clinical care and developing more effective approaches to disease prevention. The Faculty has adopted the new paradigm proposed by Ernest Boyer to define legitimate forms of scholarship:

  1. The scholarship of discovery – which is focused on the development of new knowledge (Previously referred to as “basic research”).

  2. The scholarship of integration – which involves interdisciplinary work. It encourages research that helps to bridge disciplines, draws from one discipline in informing another, or places the work of a specific discipline within a broader context.

  3. The scholarship of application – which includes what has often been “relegated” to service in the earlier paradigm – involves the use of disciplinary expertise in applied settings. Often these settings test theoretical frames and evoke new theoretical structures.