Sioux City, Iowa—The Nylen School of Nursing and Health Sciences at Morningside University has received its largest grant in university history: a four-year, $2.97 million grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). The award comes through HRSA’s Nurse Education, Practice, Quality, and Retention–Transition to Practice Program (NEPQR-TPP). It will fund Project CONNECT CARE, an initiative to prepare more nurses to serve rural and medically underserved communities across the tristate area. 

Project CONNECT CARE stands for Community-Oriented Nursing, Navigation, Engagement, Clinical Training, and Career Advancement through Rural Experiences. At its center is a new simulation center where nursing students will build clinical skills, judgment, and confidence before and during their work with real patients.

A State-of-the-Art Simulation Center

The HRSA NEPQR-TPP grant will allow Morningside University to double its simulation center portfolio, significantly expanding opportunities for students to develop clinical judgment, confidence, communication, and practice-readiness through realistic patient-care experiences. The expanded simulation portfolio will include: 

  • Expanded Maternal, Pediatric, and Adult Simulation Suite – New high-fidelity simulators will include an additional MamaAnne and baby obstetric simulators, Future Peds pediatric simulators, and Anne adult simulators, allowing multiple groups of students to simultaneously practice care across the lifespan in realistic clinical scenarios. 
  • ICU/Emergency Care Simulation Suite – A dedicated high-acuity simulation environment featuring the Laerdal SimMan Critical Care high-fidelity patient simulator will create intensive care and emergency care situations, allowing students to respond to complex and rapidly changing patient conditions in a safe learning environment. 
  • Realistic Role-Play and Immersive Simulation Room – A 3B Scientific Immersive Interactive Simulation Room will use projection, touch, and interactive technology to transform the learning space into realistic health care and community environments. The suite will support role-play, communication, assessment, and team-based scenarios that extend simulation beyond the traditional hospital room. 
  • Virtual Reality Simulation Room – Oxford Medical Simulation’s virtual reality technology will allow students to practice patient care through immersive VR experiences. The suite will include VR headsets and additional interactive simulator manikins, providing students with flexible opportunities to strengthen clinical decision-making and practice skills through repeated, technology-enhanced experiences. 
  • Wearable Simulation and Standardized Patient Experiences Room – Avkin wearable simulators, worn by live actors, will create highly realistic patient encounters that allow students to communicate, assess, treat, and evaluate. 

Students will also train on wound care, ostomy, pressure injury, and abdominal exam models. Food group replica sets will help them teach patients about healthy eating. 

Built Around Competency and Community

Project CONNECT CARE is designed so every graduate across all nursing and health program offerings can demonstrate the knowledge, skills, values, and professional behaviors needed for safe and effective practice. The project’s defining features include:

  • Competency-based education that measures what students can do, not just what they know. 
  • Experiential learning in both traditional and nontraditional community health settings, supported by expanded clinical partnerships. 
  • Advanced simulation to strengthen clinical judgment, communication, care coordination, and interdisciplinary collaboration across health professions.

Students will also have access to financial aid, mentoring, tutoring, and other resources. Faculty and clinical preceptors will receive added training to support student success.

Continued Support for Future Nurse Educators

Morningside has also received a one-year, $95,000 grant from HRSA’s Nurse Faculty Loan Program (NFLP). The program offers student loan relief to nurses preparing to become faculty, which helps address the national shortage of nurse educators. Morningside will direct the funds to students in its Doctor of Nursing Practice program.