CSU Nursing Department

In response to recommendations made by the Illinois Implementation Commission on Nursing (IICON) to increase the number of baccalaureate nurse graduates in Illinois, Chicago State University conducted a feasibility study that led to the initiation of the Division of Nursing at the University. In March of 1971, a director and assistant director were appointed to develop the nursing program. Approval of the program was obtained from the Illinois Department of Registration and Education and the Illinois Board of Governors in 1972. During the summer of 1973, the first dean was appointed and in 1974, the Division became a College.

The period between 1975 and 1980 were years of development and expansion. The program received an initial eight-year accreditation from the National League for Nursing (NLN) in 1981, and was re-accredited in 1989 by the National League for Nursing (NLN), and in 1997 by the National League for Nursing Accrediting Commission, Inc. (NLNAC). In 1992, the College of Nursing and the College of Allied Health were merged into the College of Nursing and Allied Health Professions and in 1995 it became the College of Health Sciences.

The Department of Nursing adheres to the mission of the University and the College of Health Sciences, which is to provide access to higher education for residents of the region, and the state and beyond.

The mission of the Department of Nursing is to provide educational experiences that empower learners, promote competence in the area of professional nursing, strengthen the capacity for employment in a variety of clinical practice settings within the healthcare community, and develop a sense of civic responsibility.

Through quality and creative instruction, faculty strives to provide an environment that is conducive to learning, stimulates intellectual inquiry, and encourages personal and professional growth. Faculty creates an environment that fosters scholarship, and a desire for lifelong learning.

The Nursing faculty is sensitive to the unique characteristics of learners as these relate to issues of access, retention and graduation. The faculty strives to prepare graduates who are able to function as compassionate, caring professionals. By providing a high quality program, faculty endeavors to prepare leaders to meet the changing and comprehensive health needs of the community. Both faculty and learners attempt to create and strengthen community linkages in order to develop collaborative research and service projects that will enhance the health status of the community.

To accomplish this mission, The Department prepares learners who:

The faculty of the Department of Nursing believes that persons are self-determined, bio- psycho-social-spiritual-cultural beings who possess inherent worth and dignity, who are capable of growth and worthy of respect. Throughout the life cycle, persons interact with their internal and external environments and can alter their environments to meet changing needs.

Persons have basic human needs, which are essential to survival. The issues which persons encounter and the manner in which they meet their needs reflect their culture, capabilities, values, and beliefs. Society consists of diverse groups united by common socio-cultural characteristics and human needs such as security, nurturance, affection, and communication. The family, the basic unit of society, is the setting in which person’s initial socialization occurs and values and patterns of communication are learned. The values and practices learned in the family are shared and transmitted from one generation to another.

Families as diverse-dynamic-social systems are interrelated and interdependently linked with other systems. Families evolve and interact with their ecological and social environments and can change those environments. Such changes that have the potential for diminishing or enhancing health can change those environments. Such changes have the potential for diminishing or enhancing health and quality of life for future generations.

We believe that nursing is a caring profession that provides services to society at any point along the wellness-illness continuum. Nursing is an interactive and deliberate process directed toward enabling individuals, families, and communities to achieve the highest level of wellness in a changing environment. The nursing process provides a framework for interaction among nurses, persons, and communities. Nurses provide primary, secondary, and tertiary services to clients in a variety of environments. Individuals, families, and communities in a diverse multi-cultural society are the consumers of these services.

We believe the practice of professional nursing is an art and applied science. It requires prudent caring practitioners who utilize critical thinking, creativity, problem-solving, effective communication, and sensitivity to cultural diversity in delivering therapeutic care. In meeting changing societal needs and expectations, nurses must be flexible in responding to and initiating change. Nurses collaborate with other health care providers, consumers, and policy makers of health care. Nursing practice is enhanced through inquiry, advocacy, and community involvement.

We believe that preparation for the practice of professional nursing occurs in a baccalaureate program that integrates liberal arts and sciences, as well as nursing theory and practice. Liberal education fosters: (1) the development of altruistic values; (2) an understanding of and appreciation for the social and ethical issues of life in a global society; (3) the conceptualization and synthesis of general education and nursing knowledge; and (4) the development of affective, cognitive, and psychomotor skills and behaviors to function as a caring, beginning practitioner in nursing.

Health is a dynamic state occurring along the continuum of high-level wellness death. It is influenced by persons’ ability to respond to changes in their internal and external environment. The perception of health is highly individualized and is influenced by cultural, social, economic, and spiritual factors. Throughout the life cycle, people experience varied states of health along the wellness-illness continuum. The ability to respond to these changes in health will vary at different times. Health care is a basic human right. Each person has a right to participate in health care decisions and have access to health care services. The focus of health care is prevention, promotion, and maintenance of health. Nurses interact with persons, families, and communities along the wellness-illness continuum to promote and maintain optimal levels of well-being.

Teaching-learning is a dynamic, collaborative, reciprocal, life-long process of growth arising from interaction between educator and learner. Educators are responsible for guiding learning activities, which create an environment that is conducive to learning and valuing of self as a basis for caring for others. In addition, they provide opportunities to practice skills, and offer positive reinforcement as motivation for learning. As a diverse group of scholars, both educator and learner interact with the environment bringing a variety of orientations influenced by factors such as previous experience, lifestyles, and desires for achievement.

Recognizing these differences, we believe in providing opportunities to validate prior learning. We believe that instructional strategies should be designed to respond to individual differences.

As learners actively participate in the teaching-learning process, they become more independent, self-directed, and creative in meeting their learning needs.Critical thinking and self-evaluation are integral elements in the teaching-learning process.

The conceptual framework emanates from the philosophy and serves as the organizing structure for the curriculum. The central theme for this conceptual framework is the concept of caring. Caring is a universal phenomenon and is critical to growth, development, and a sense of wellness. Caring is used to promote health and dignity across the life span.

The expression, process, and patterns of caring may vary among cultures; however, it remains a driving force for self-actualization. Caring gives comprehensive meaning and order to persons’ lives and helps to overcome separateness, achieve union and transcends the routine. Caring implies viewing persons as unique, holistic, self-determining beings endowed with complementary stabilizing and actualizing tendencies.

Stabilizing tendencies are responsible for maintaining the fluctuating internal and

external environments within a range that is compatible with continuing existence. Stabilizing tendencies enable persons to strive for increasingly higher levels of well-being through the process of growth and development. As health is a dynamic state that fluctuates along the health-illness continuum and throughout the life cycle, expressions of both stabilizing and actualizing tendencies are critical to the function of healthy persons. Self-determination, expressed through individual choice, enables persons to maintain health and achieve increasingly higher levels of wellness Human caring acknowledges the right to self-determination and choice inherent in the enduring values of human freedom and dignity that is both universal and individual. Viewing the concepts of wellness, health, and illness within the context of individual, family, and community systems enables nurses to interact in ways that maintain health and promote optimal levels of well-being. It is through their uniqueness that each individual, family, and community responds to changes in the internal and external environments in an attempt to maintain health and achieve higher levels of wellness.

The major ingredients of caring are knowing, patience, honesty, trust, humility, hope, and courage. Caring, as an interactional process, requires that all persons in the caring relation- ship must know their own powers and limitations, as well as know the powers and limitations of others involved in the relationship. With knowing comes patience, which is the ability to demonstrate a nonjudgmental acceptance of the other person, and allowing others to grow at their own pace. Honesty between all persons in the caring relationship facilitates openness within the relationship and the ability to accept constructive criticism.

Trust, another crucial ingredient of a caring encompasses elements of knowing, patience, and honesty in that there must be the belief that all persons will grow in time, and that mistakes will be growth producing. Humility implies that caring is reciprocal and that both parties involved in the caring relationship will learn from each other. Through hope, both parties will support each other even through difficult times. Courage allows the caring parties to enter into the unknown of human behavior.