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The UT Health Science Center San Antonio received $300,000 from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to expand its incoming nursing classes for the 2010-11 school year, according to a news release. And if benchmarks are met, the School of Nursing is expected to receive an additional $450,000 to support even larger incoming classes the following academic year.

The funds were awarded because of the school’s successful track record of increasing the number of incoming nursing students and then graduating them to enter the workforce. The school expects to increase its class size by 30 students in 2010-11 and by 15 more students in 2011-12, pending the additional funds.

“This is wonderful news and something we have been working on,” School of Nursing Dean Eileen Breslin, RN, PhD, said in the news release. “These funds will go toward hiring an extra five faculty members to teach the additional students. Receiving funds to hire more faculty members is one of the keys to enrolling more students and getting them into the workforce. This funding further validates our successful nursing program.”

Also, UT Health Science Center nursing professor Kathleen Stevens, RN, EdD, FAAN, a national leader in the analysis of healthcare quality, has received a $3 million grant to fund quality improvement research, according to a new release. She will lead a two-year grant that will create the first national research network focusing on front-line hospital care provided by nurses. The grant is part of the $29 million the Health Science Center has received so far through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

This network of clinical and academic nurse researchers will collaborate in studies across multiple hospitals to quickly determine what works in improving bedside care. It will be positioned to move answers rapidly into practice.

“Best practices are established by taking good ideas and testing them, using the scientific method,” Stevens said. “We have done a good job collecting some great ideas that work in one hospital or clinic here or there, but they can’t be considered ‘best practices’ until they have been evaluated scientifically to make sure they really work under most circumstances.”

For the new project, Stevens is recruiting network members from hospitals and academic institutions, as well as Westat Inc., a research support organization which coordinated the AHRQ’s Health Care Innovations Exchange.