Kent State’s College of Nursing has been awarded a $100,000 grant from the Margaret Clark Morgan Foundation.

The foundation, a private grant-making organization that supports Northeast Ohio mental health programs, allocated two distributions to the college.

Associate Professor Barbara Drew and Wendy Umberger, associate dean for graduate programs, accepted a $70,000 grant for their two-year joint project called “Expanding the Base of Advanced Practice Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing in Northeast Ohio.”

The grant will be put toward offering 28 full-time and 16 part-time traineeships in the College of Nursing to qualifying students beginning next fall, according to a Nov. 30 news release.

The foundation also awarded Drew and Umberger — along with Assistant Professor Lisa Echeverry, director of the College of Nursing’s Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) program — $30,000 in the form of a DNP Scholar Award. One “exceptional psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner” earning their DNP degree will be given half the amount for tuition and half for supplemental income, the news release stated.

Created in 2009, the DNP program is a two-year program for nursing students interested in earning a terminal degree in less than two years. Based online, the program is geared towards those interested in learning leadership and technology skills, according to the Kent State website.

“The College of Nursing … is committed to helping increase the number of mental health providers in Northeast Ohio, particularly those who are trained to provide both therapy and prescribe medication,” Drew said in the news release.

The student will work with the foundation and its allied companies to establish a doctoral project that advances mental health care, as well as access to health care services and patient outcomes.

Umberger said in the news release  that access to mental health services continue to be a critical challenge for people with mental illness in Northeast Ohio “in part, to a shortage of mental health professionals with a broad skill mix that includes psychotherapy and prescriptive management.”

Traineeship and DNP Scholar Award applications are being accepted now until June 1, 2017. 

Alex Delaney-Gesing is a senior reporter, contact her at [email protected].