As our nation struggles with health care challenges from an aging population, to a shortage of nurses, there is an increasing need for nurse scientists to provide leadership in the translation of successful research into clinical practice. The land-grant mission at MSU combined with strong leadership for research development within the College of Nursing (CON) uniquely positions the CON to respond to this need to prepare nurse scientists and increase our research capacity. The CON has a history of NIH funding, research productivity, and commitment to building interdisciplinary research teams for research programs. Research programs within the CON are consistent with the NIH and NINR priorities as well as State priority areas. The two CON research focus areas are: a) Management of Chronic Illness, and b) Healthy Children and Families. The goal of this building addition project is to expand research space and facilities to accelerate the rate of research growth in the College's strategic focus areas in conjunction with consolidation of all CON space resources. An important benefit of the project is that it will allow for relocation of the Nursing Research Center (NRC) and faculty research offices from various locations to a centralized site in the Life Science Building Complex. Consistent with the national call to increase production of nurse scientists and translate successful nursing research into clinical practice to benefit the health care of patients and their families, specific aims are: 1) provide expanded, high quality space for existing and future faculty research programs in the MSU-CON. Two floors (20,906 GSF) within a new 3-story building addition would be used exclusively to support nursing research. This space will accommodate growing research teams, promote and improve efficiency in grant preparation and increase opportunities for collaboration and mentorship of nurse researchers, junior faculty, post docs and doctoral students, and 2) to relocate and consolidate the research functions of the CON in a building adjacent to the main CON facility in Life Science A building in order to better integrate the research mission of the college with the education and clinical practice missions. This will maximize sharing of common resources and generation of new ideas. Nurse researchers are dedicated to conducting rigorous research in order to establish the scientific basis for patient care and to achieve quality of care and improve patient outcomes. Clinical nurses use this evidenced-based research to assess, plan and implement patient care, helping nurses to achieve uniformity in care through the use of standards of care in their clinical practice. The research addition within the proposed building is critical to facilitate development of synergies among faculty, post-docs and doctoral students in order to accelerate development of their programs of research, to enable nursing student's desire to pursue research as a career option, and the translation of successful research findings into practice in order to advance and improve the quality of patient care.
