Fact Sheet

The University of Miami School of Nursing and Health Studies has set the standard for quality nursing education in South Florida for more than 50 years. Established in 1948 as the region’s first baccalaureate nursing program, the school has educated nurses at the master’s level since 1976 and the doctoral level since 1985.

In February 2005 the school expanded its program offerings to include UM’s health science program and changed its name to the School of Nursing and Health Studies. The expanded curriculum includes programs leading to the B.S.N., M.S.N., and Ph.D. degrees as well as the B.S. in Health Science degree.

  • Over 4,000 UM nursing alumni live and work in nearly all 50 states and eight foreign countries. UM nursing graduates are active professionally beyond the hospital and clinical settings in the fields of law, government, education, communications, and business.
  • The school’s enrollment in 2006-2007 is 530 men and women: 447 nursing students and 83 health science students. Male students constitute 11 percent of nursing student enrollment in comparison to 9 percent nationwide.
  • With a minority enrollment of over 70 percent, the school’s student body remains among the most diverse in the nation. In 2006-2007, the school’s body is 40 percent Hispanic, 29 percent white, 26 percent black or African-American, and 5 percent Asian-American. Nationwide, only 2 percent of R.N’s are Hispanic while just 5 percent are black or African-American. 
  • The school is a national leader in the area of cultural competency, which recognizes an individual’s unique health beliefs and practices, having pioneered this aspect of the nursing curriculum in 1980s.
  • The school collaborates regularly in education and research programs with UM’s Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine, one of the nation’s premiere academic medical centers. Nursing and health studies students are exposed to clinical experiences on UM’s medical campus and at more than 170 health and social service organizations throughout Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, and Monroe Counties serving some of the most health at-risk populations in the nation.
  • One hundred percent of the school’s B.S.N. students have secured employment by the time of graduation.
  • The University of Miami is one of ten “exemplar schools” invited to join a new collaborative of medical and nursing schools sponsored by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. The goal of this IHI collaborative is to assist leading medical and nursing schools as they work together to increase inter-professional education, address systemwide problems, and speed educational change.