School of Nursing

Director's Message

I am so happy to announce that UT Board of Trustees has approved the elevation of the School of Nursing to the UTC College of Nursing—pending final approval from the Tennessee Higher Education Commission,  effective January 2026. Please see the UTC News article regarding this exciting announcement! For over 50 years, the School of Nursing which started as a department in 1973 has had an excellent reputation for educating nurses who were practice ready. The College of Nursing will be the fifth college on campus and the first new one in several decades. With almost 1000 students who have declared nursing as their major, the nursing program has significantly increased in size and is the number one major for freshman students.

With 3 BSN and 6 DNP programs, we have now provided students with many options for working in this field without jeopardizing the quality of their education. More doesn’t necessarily mean better. In our case, it does. We will join the College of Health, Education and Professional Studies or CHEPS, our current college; the College of Arts and Sciences; the College of Engineering and Computer Science; and the Gary W. Rollins College of Business. We will miss our colleagues in CHEPS but we have had the support of Dean Valerie Rutledge through this process.

Being an independent College provides us with greater visibility. It is hard to believe that the community is still surprised that we have a nursing program at UTC. The community will have no doubt we are here! And there is no greater time as we prepare for our new home, the Dorothy and Jim Kennedy Health Sciences Building at the corner of Palmetto and East 3rd Street.  It is well known that we already have more applicants than we can handle at our current enrollment, so this new building and being a college will show the community what we have to offer to potential students. Going from two rooms of Race Hall in 1973 to Brock and then the Guerry Center, and then into our current location in the Metro Annex in 2010, the space is just too small. We can't wait to be in the Health Sciences Building as a College! What changes we have seen in a little more than 50 years. More to come, we promise.

Chris

Christine Benz Smith, PhD, APRN, FNP-BC
UC Foundation Professor
Director, School of Nursing
Chief Health Affairs Officer
 

The baccalaureate degree in nursing, Doctor of Nursing Practice, and post-graduate APRN certificate at The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga are accredited by the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education (http://www.ccneaccreditation.org).

The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC) to award bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees.