SAN ANTONIO – St. Mary’s Bachelor of Science in Nursing program, set to launch in fall 2024, has received a $1 million donation from the IBC Foundation.
The funding will go toward the construction of a 10,000-sf nursing wing on the Innovation Center’s third floor, bearing the IBC Foundation name. Once completed, it will have a lab space, a seven-bed clinical skills lab, four simulation suites, and faculty offices.
The donation will also help with the purchase and installation of necessary equipment such as IT, audio-visual infrastructure, medical mannequins, furniture, startup supplies, and additional equipment.
The rest of the center will be used for education in advanced manufacturing, instrumentation, data science, and machine learning. Additional areas of study will include additive manufacturing and reverse engineering, logistics and supply chain management, human/computer interaction, and engineer design.
The new facility comes just when Texas could soon face a nursing shortage. The Texas Department of State Health Services projects a shortage of more than 12,000 licensed nurses by 2032 in the San Antonio area alone.