Loyola Nursing receives second HEED Award
The Marcella Niehoff School of Nursing has earned its second Higher Education Excellence in Diversity (HEED) Award for Health Professions Schools in recognition of its deepening commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Loyola Nursing, which earned its first HEED award in 2023, was the only school in Illinois to receive the honor this year.
The back-to-back HEED awards highlight the growth and success of the school’s DEI programming, which has become central to its mission of promoting social justice and health equity, according to Dian Squire, associate dean for inclusive excellence.
“This HEED Award recognizes us as a national leader in inclusive excellence and we are proud of the impact our work is having on our students and, more broadly, within nursing education,” he said.
Loyola Nursing recently received the American Association of Colleges of Nursing’s (AACN) 2024 Inclusive Excellence, Belonging, and Sustainability in Nursing Education Award, the only school nationwide to receive the honor. AACN called Loyola Nursing a “model” for other nursing schools thanks to its “efforts to develop a diverse cadre of nurse leaders and sustain a culture of belonging.”
In the past year, Loyola Nursing has celebrated the graduation of its first cohort of students in the CARE (Collaboration, Access, Resources, and Equity) Pathway to the Bachelor of Science in Nursing and received a National Institutes of Health grant to develop an online curriculum to educate nursing students on transgender health care.
The school is holding its second Inclusive Excellence conference in October, expanding its 2023 Inclusive Excellence Day into a three-day speaker series focused on DEI in nursing education.
Dean Lorna Finnegan said the underlying goal of the school’s inclusive excellence program is to prepare diverse nurses to recognize and respond to the impact of social determinants of health across communities.
“We could not be prouder of our second HEED Award, which recognizes the significant investment we continue to make in educating our students and in creating an environment that supports students, faculty, and staff of all races, ethnicities, and gender identities,” she said.
The HEED Award is given annually by INSIGHT into Diversity, the largest diversity magazine in higher education and a leader in identifying best DEI practices in universities across the United States.
Publisher Lenore Pearlstein said the award process is rigorous and detailed, examining student and employee recruitment and retention, continued leadership support for diversity, and other aspects of campus diversity and inclusion.
Loyola Nursing will be featured with 70 other award recipients in the magazine’s November/December issue.