The Indiana Wesleyan University Board of Trustees announced today the creation of the School of Health Sciences, as a fifth principal academic unit of IWU.
The new school is the centerpiece of the IWU health sciences initiative, creating a home for health-sciences related academic programs which the initiative will add to the University.
"Many professionals engaged in the health professions may desire to earn graduate or advanced degrees while entry level positions now require graduate degrees," said Dr. Larry Lindsay, Chief of Staff and Acting and Founding Dean of the School of Health Sciences. "We are responding to the future needs of those students in the health professions. Thus we seek to become a major Christian provider of health and human services at the local, state, national and global level."
"The project has reached the stage at which it requires the proper governance and administrative structures in order to continue to progress," read the proposal offered to the Board of Trustees at their fall meeting this week.
The aim of the new School of Health Sciences is to create several new graduate degree programs in Health Sciences fields, some of which will be housed in the new school. Planned degrees include a Doctor of Physical Therapy degree (DPT), an Occupational Therapy Doctorate (OTD) and Entry-Level Masters in Athletic Training (MAT) and a Masters in Public Health (MPH).
One other degree, the Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) will be a part of the School of Nursing. Approval for the DNP is pending Higher Learning Commission review at its October meeting.
The IWU community gathered on October 5 to dedicate the cornerstone of the new, five-story, 100,000-square-foot science and nursing facility under construction on the Marion residential campus.
Students, faculty, staff, alumni, administrators, community members and construction personnel assembled in the Chapel Auditorium to dedicate the new facility, which will connect via an atrium to the Burns Hall of Science and Nursing.
At the ceremony attendees received a limestone rock, representative of the facility's limestone foundations, the strong reputations of alumni and academic programs, and steadfast spiritual support. IWU Associate Vice President of Campus Planning and Construction Jay McHenry asked the attendees to pray over the rocks and that they could return them to the construction site by October 19 to be placed inside the foundation.
"A firm foundation of nearly 65,000 graduates and numerous supporters is far...stronger than 109 million rocks will ever be," McHenry said.
Plans call for the new building to be open for business in the fall of 2014.