Nursing Workforce Development (NWD) - Pacific Lutheran University (PLU) School of Nursing requests funding through the HRSA Nursing Workforce Development program to implement the Parkland-to-Practice Pathway, a comprehensive grow-your-own nursing workforce model designed to increase the number of students from disadvantaged backgrounds who enroll in, persist through, and graduate from nursing programs and enter practice in medically vulnerable communities in Tacoma and Pierce County, Washington. The project responds to a concentrated local need: Parkland and surrounding Spanaway/Tacoma communities are adjacent to PLU's main campus and are part of a Pierce County service area where economic hardship, educational barriers, and health workforce shortages intersect. Pierce County also faces sustained registered nurse hiring demand, including an average of 1,574 job postings per month in 2024 and a projected shortage of more than 6,700 nurses by 2030. PLU is well-positioned to carry out this project through its full continuum of accredited nursing education, spanning from entry-level bachelor's to doctoral nursing degrees, and through an established clinical network of more than 100 cooperating health care agencies and 21 major hospital and health system partners. The Parkland-to-Practice Pathway will use three linked strategies: targeted recruitment and structured transfer pathways for students from economically disadvantaged communities; comprehensive academic, financial, and psychosocial support to improve retention and graduation; and clinical training, preceptor development, and faculty mentoring in medically vulnerable settings, including PLU's federally qualified health center partner, Community Health Care. Over the four-year project period, PLU will provide direct participant/trainee support to approximately 30 students from disadvantaged backgrounds per year, for up to approximately 120 trainee-years of support, and anticipates supporting the graduation of approximately 43 to 50 nurses who reflect and are prepared to serve the communities they come from. The project will track disadvantaged student recruitment, enrollment, retention, graduation, licensure, post-graduation employment, and preceptor capacity using existing PLU systems, including Banner, Canvas/Sakai, CastleBranch, Clinical Placements Northwest, and institutional financial records. By embedding student support, early-alert processes, transfer pathways, and grow-your-own preceptor and faculty development into existing School of Nursing operations rather than creating standalone project infrastructure, the Parkland-to-Practice Pathway is designed to function as a permanent, locally rooted nursing workforce pipeline for Pierce County, not a four-year scholarship program that ends when federal funding does.
