Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, has been involved in the
education of nurses since the early 1940s, when the Newark and Camden campuses
offered courses in public health nursing. The nursing program at Rutgers-Camden was established as an
upper-division program in the College of
Arts and Sciences.
The nursing program at the Newark
Campus was established in 1952 with funds allocated by Governor Alfred E.
Driscoll. In 1955, the School of Nursing received accreditation by the National League
for Nursing. On March 6, 1956, the School of Nursing became the College of
Nursing. Ella V. Stonsby, first director of the School of Nursing, was
appointed the first dean of the college.
Supported by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health, in 1956,
the clinical nurse specialist graduate program in psychiatric nursing was
established by Hildegard Peplau, the first in the nation; in 1974, the College
of Nursing established three graduate clinical programs in community health
nursing, parent/child nursing, and medical/surgical nursing.
The College of Nursing established the R.N. to B.S. in nursing program in 1980
and offered the undergraduate program on the Rutgers University–New Brunswick
campus in 1983. The school nurse certification program was offered in 2002 and
the accelerated second degree program was implemented in 2005.
The first doctor of philosophy program in nursing was approved by the New
Jersey Board of Higher Education in 1989 and the Doctorate of Nursing Practice
was implemented in 2007.
Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences (RBHS)
was established in July 2013 with the integration of most units of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ) with Rutgers
University. The College of Nursing became part of RBHS and merged with the UMDNJ School of Nursing and became known as the Rutgers School of Nursing.
The School of Nursing in Newark and New Brunswick became the state's largest,
most comprehensive nursing education program.
