Eileen Lantier is one of the lucky few who can stay.

Lantier, a current faculty member in Syracuse University’s School of Nursing, will become the associate dean of the College of Human Services and Health Professions when the nursing school closes its doors at the end of the this semester.

While Lantier will remain at SU after the class of 2006 graduates, countless other faculty members have left the university as a result of the program’s closing and the graduating class is the last to ever receive a degree from SU’s School of Nursing.

The reason for the closing, which comes in the middle of a national nurse shortage, is still unclear for many.

On June 3, the university will unveil what will stand to be the only remembrance of this highly regarded nursing program: a bench in the Orange Grove on the SU Quad.

Lantier, a 1974 graduate of the nursing program, said the bench is being donated by faculty and alumni, including those from the Sigma Theta Tau National Nursing Honor Society.

‘We’ll be closing with a remarkable class and a proud contribution to healthcare,’ Lantier said.

While the School of Nursing, a female-dominated program in a female-dominated college, will officially close at the end of the semester, the close has been four years in the making.

Lantier said there has been a lot of speculation surrounding the reasons for the closing of the school.

‘Nobody knows for sure,’ she said.

Lantier did say a nursing program is expensive to run because of the small student-to-faculty ratio and the necessary teaching facilities.

‘I can’t help but think that has to be factored in to the decision,’ she said.

From 1999 to 2000, the School of Nursing lost more than $1 million per year, and more than $2 million per year in the school years between 2000 and 2003, according to financial documentation that accompanied Vice Chancellor and Provost Deborah Freund’s proposal in 2002 to close the school. Nursing administrators disputed these figures, claiming the school had made $500,000.

Director of the Office of Budget and Planning John Hogan said in an article published by The Daily Orange on Dec. 6, 2002 the university’s figures conflict with those calculated by the School of Nursing because nursing administrators count each student’s full tuition in the revenue for the program, while the university only considers revenue made from nursing courses, because the rest of the tuition is put toward other courses each student takes in other programs, such as the College of Arts and Sciences.

David Smith, vice president of enrollment management, said in the same article that another reason for the decision to close was the program’s inability to meet enrollment quotas.

Nursing faculty contested this, saying the figures presented by Smith did not take into account internal transfers into the nursing program.

‘I don’t claim to understand why we had to close,’ Lantier said.

Erin Abrams, a senior nursing major, said she doesn’t think the program being too expensive to run or having a shortage of students should be a reason to close the school or is even the real reason for closing it.

She and fellow classmates say they have heard rumors as to why the school is closing its doors.

‘I can’t really get into it,’ Abrams said. ‘It’s just a lot of personal reasons.’

But Dani Rosner, a 2005 graduate of SU’s School of Nursing, said part of the problem is not enough students know of the situation.

‘Half (of SU) doesn’t even know the (nursing) school is closing,’ Rosner said. ‘If they had, maybe there would have been more of a fight to keep it open.’

Regardless of why the program is closing, all of the students and faculty said they feel extreme sadness about the program ending. Some have even called the decision close to foolish.

‘It’s just sad to see the school of nursing close, especially in our time with such a shortage of nurses,’ said Heather Cushing, a senior nursing major, who also said she feels SU made the wrong decision in closing the school.

Rosner said she thinks the closing is awful.

‘That is the general reaction I get,’ she said. ‘Why would you close a nursing program when there is a nursing shortage around the country?’

SU may be unique in its situation. In fact, LeMoyne College, a Jesuit college in Syracuse, began offering degrees in nursing in fall 2004.

‘The timing seems to coincide with the closing of SU’s nursing program,’ said Susan Bastable, director of nursing at LeMoyne.

‘With the closing of SU’s program, it was an opportune time for LeMoyne to offer that kind of opportunity.’

LeMoyne offers two programs, one which allows current registered nurses to earn their bachelor’s degree in nursing-a program SU offered-and a dual-degree program that allows students to earn an associates degree at LeMoyne and a bachelor’s degree in nursing from St. Joe’s College of Nursing while still living on campus at LeMoyne. Bastable said the timing of the closing of SU’s School of Nursing surprised many in the community because the decision came during a time when a nursing shortage was just beginning to be evident.

‘We need more nursing opportunities for education, not less,’ she said.

LeMoyne received 176 applications for 20 spots in its nursing program this past fall, Bastable said. She also said more than 32,000 qualified applicants for nursing degrees were turned away nationwide because there are not enough nursing faculty to teach.

‘Perhaps when decisions were being made at SU, we weren’t in a time of such shortage,’ she said.

SU’s School of Nursing, which opened in 1943, had many positive aspects to it which attracted most of its current faculty and students and resulted in almost all of its students staying in the program after the closing was announced.

Lantier said what speaks to the strength of the program most for her is how she is still in touch with classmates of hers, faculty who she had when she attended SU and students who she has taught throughout the years.

‘It doesn’t get much better than that,’ she said.

Lantier also said the school coordinated with the Division of International Programs Abroad so students could do internships with major hospitals in metropolitan areas, such as Boston, New York, Chicago and Miami. Rosner, who was originally majored in nutrition, said she liked the close-knit feeling of the program.

‘I liked nursing better,’ Rosner said. ‘It’s a lot more hands-on. I truly found my calling.’

Cushing, who originally was a psychology major, said she liked the professors the most and the one-on-one patient contact after her freshman year.

‘It was one of the best decisions I ever made,’ she said.

While Cushing said it was not a problem during the last four years to fill nursing course requirements, there were other side effects of the pending closing.

‘Our resources were cut off,’ she said. ‘It was a huge slap in the face.’

Cushing said the university got rid of the program’s Ostrom Avenue computer lab and clinical hospital-style lab by the second year and slowly stopped subscribing to some major medical journals.

Abrams added that while course requirements were still available, there was a smaller selection of course electives.

Additionally, faculty members dwindled as each year went on, the students said. Rosner said she had lost all of her main professors before she even graduated, resulting in few people to go to for help and for recommendations for jobs or graduate school.

‘The truth is, when you take away teachers, you take away what I can know,’ Rosner said.

Cushing also said the smaller faculty negatively affected the students.

‘We definitely felt the repercussions of the program closing,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t growing or flourishing.’

She said it was obvious to her and many other students that the university’s mentality toward the final graduating class was ‘just get them through.’

Abrams said she doesn’t blame the nursing faculty, though.

‘Our professor tried to provide us the best education possible with the school closing,’ she said.

Cushing said the 25 or so nursing students graduating together this year became very close during the four-year closing process.

But Abrams said despite the struggles the students endured during the program, the great strain is now going to be on the Syracuse community at large.

Abrams, who volunteered at the Franklin Magnet School of the Arts on South Alvord Street as a student nurse, said community organizations such as the one she worked at will surely feel the brunt of the program’s closing.

As for SU, the university has a relatively new health and wellness program, which Lantier said is not a replacement to the nursing program. The new program is a much broader field of study that could prepare students for second-degree programs in nursing, medicine or dentistry.

With solely a degree in health and wellness, Lantier said students could go on to work in non-profit organizations, advertising or pharmaceuticals as consultants.

‘My biggest hope is that our graduates and alums – that we can absolutely still feel as though we’re a part of SU and always have a place at SU,’ she said.

Lantier said she hopes nursing graduates continue to contribute to the university as HSHP alumni.

‘You can’t say anything bad about the school because it’s not the school’s fault, but it had to close,’ Rosner said. ‘That’s the bottom line.’

Published on June 13, 2006 at 12:00 pm