In an early 1970s cartoon, an exchange occurred between two cartoon, Jackie-Mason-sounding anteaters that went something like this:
“You an anteater?”
“Yeah. I’m an anteater. You eat ants?”
“Yeah. I eat ants.”
That little dialogue has been a long-standing metaphor in my house. My husband and I always refer to it when we meet someone who shares a fundamental common interest with us. So of course, it immediately came to mind when we at the Hartford Foundation sat down with the leadership of the Jonas Center for Nursing Excellence and began the process of forging a productive and mutually beneficial partnership to support gero-expert nursing faculty.
“You an anteater?”
The mission of the Jonas Center is to advance professional nursing in New York City and beyond. The Jonas Center created its inaugural program, Who Will Care for Me, in 2006 to promote nurse recruitment and retention, advance racial and ethnic diversity among nurses, improve practice settings, and support innovative nursing practice models.
“Yeah. I’m an anteater...”
Like the Hartford Foundation, the Jonas Center has identified faculty development as a strategic priority in working to reduce the nursing shortage. Both funders recognize that faculty development is crucial to ensuring appropriate education and training for the next generation of nurses.
Thus, in the spring of 2010, the Center launched its first initiative, the Jonas Nurse Leaders Scholar Program, to increase the number of doctoral-level nurse educators and leaders. The program will support 50 scholars by 2012 with a goal of reaching 100 scholars.
“With so many nursing students being turned away because of a lack of faculty, we wanted to focus on encouraging doctoral programs. That’s the key ingredient for solving this problem,” said Donald Jonas, co-founder and co-chair of the Advisory Board to the Jonas Center for Nursing Excellence.
“...You eat ants?”
Building upon this shared strategic approach, the Jonas Center and Hartford Foundation are joining forces and building upon the strengths of each program as we work to increase the number of gero-expert faculty.
According to Donald Jonas, “Hartford is the leader that sets the pace for everybody in this field, and we are thrilled to work with them on a project of such importance to our geriatric population.”
To hear more from Donald and Barbara Jonas, and Darlene Curley, executive director of the Jonas Center, please check out this video:
“Yeah. I eat ants.”
This two-year partnership will support nine doctoral candidates in geriatric nursing, one at each of the nine Hartford Centers of Geriatric Nursing Excellence as part of the Jonas Nurse Leaders Scholar Program. Each of the Hartford Centers will select a Scholar, and the award will begin in the fall of 2010. The awards will include stipends of $32,000 over a period of two years, with funding coming from the Jonas Center and the Hartford-funded Building Academic Geriatric Nursing Capacity (BAGNC) coordinating center, housed at the American Academy of Nursing.
Scholars will also receive extensive mentoring and leadership training as part of the annual BAGNC Leadership Conference. The BAGNC coordinating center will provide administrative oversight of the program. The Scholars will use their awards to pursue the goal of becoming academic geriatric nurses, with a special focus on geriatric mental health or community-based care for older adults.
We are proud of this partnership and think it a win/win for all concerned. We thank the Jonas Center for their commitment to increasing the number of well-qualified geriatric nursing faculty. And we at the Hartford Foundation continue to seek out any other interested anteaters.