$1.6 million gift awarded to nursing students More than 950 North Dakota nursing students (LPN to Ph.D.) have received free access to a Personal Online Library, which aids them in their nursing education, courtesy of a nursing grant and partnership involving the University of North Dakota, Elsevier Publishing and others. The retail value of this online library is greater than $1,700 per student, or $1.6 million total. Elsevier Publishing is a business partner on the Partners Investing in Nursing (PIN) grant, a project funded by a partnership between the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Dakota Medical Foundation and the University of North Dakota College of Nursing. Nursing students will have the ability to access material from multiple educational sources and have that information be portable. In today’s mobile society, and with an increase in online/distance education, this feature will be extremely beneficial to students. The Personal Online Library service will also provide a huge cost savings to nursing schools across the state, especially the small rural schools that cannot afford subscriptions to multiple nursing journals. “This tremendous gift allows students access to nursing resources for the next 28 years,” states Cheryl Stauffenecker, PIN project coordinator. “It will be an invaluable tool to enhancing nursing student’s personal learning and ultimately meeting the health care needs of our state.” The PIN Project aims to recruit new and advanced practice nurses through a “growing our own” approach. Instead of taking nurses out of their current setting and depleting the workforce even further, this project works with the rural hospitals to “help them help themselves.” Nurses across the state will be offered the opportunity to further their degrees in order to more effectively serve their communities. This targeted approach will help alleviate the lack of an advanced-degree workforce in the state by increasing enrollment in a degree ladder program (PN-AD-BSN-MS), thereby boosting the number of qualified individuals to help educate tomorrow’s nursing workforce. PIN Project partners include North Dakota State College of Science and members of the Dakota Nursing Program: Bismarck State College, Lake Region State College, Minot State University-Bottineau, and Williston State College; Regional health care employers, including Altru Health System, MedCenter One Health Systems, Trinity Health, St. Alexius Medical Center, and the Quentin Burdick Memorial Health Care Facility and Standing Rock Service Unit (Indian Health Service); North Dakota State Workforce Development Council, Job Service North Dakota, and Elsevier Publishing.