D'Youville University has been awarded a $3 million federal grant aimed at strengthening nursing education and helping students move from classroom training into professional practice at the West Side Buffalo campus. The money arrives as the school's nurse practitioner programs have more than doubled in size over the past four years, and as New York grapples with a widening gap between the number of nurses it trains and the number hospitals need.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services awarded the funds to D'Youville University, according to The Buffalo News. The four-year grant, confirmed by btpm.org, extends through August 2030 and is structured to front-load spending on equipment and student support. In its first year alone, the grant includes $206,000 for equipment such as simulation-based technology, $164,000 for supplies and $150,000 earmarked for trainee tuition and fees, per the same outlet's reporting.
Enrollment Growth Driving the Investment
D'Youville University president Lorrie Clemo said the university's nurse practitioner programs have more than doubled in size over the past four years, a surge she attributed to investments in high-fidelity technology, nurse educators and expanded simulation training. That growth is reflected in the numbers: enrollment in the nurse practitioner program climbed from just over 300 students in 2022 to almost 800 this year, btpm.org reported.
D'Youville School of Nursing Dean Shannon Mcrory-Churchill said the grant will help expand education access as the field becomes more decentralized, according to the station's report. The university plans to use the funding to continue building out high-fidelity technology, add nurse educators and expand simulation training, the kind of investment that has already fueled the program's rapid growth.
A Statewide Shortage Looms Over the Funding
The grant lands amid a broader nursing shortage across New York. The state Department of Labor projects more than 17,000 annual openings for registered nurses between 2022 and 2032, but the state is currently producing roughly 10,000 new nurses per year, a gap that experts warn will widen, according to chwsny.org.
That same report found that about half of nursing programs turned away qualified applicants last year because of insufficient faculty, a shortage of clinical training sites and enrollment caps. The report's author pointed to pay disparities between nursing faculty and bedside nurses as a root cause, noting, “When you look at faculty salaries versus bedside salaries, there's still a huge disparity there.”
For D'Youville, the federal award offers a direct way to chip away at those bottlenecks by funding the equipment, supplies and tuition support that let more students move through its nursing pipeline. With the program's enrollment already climbing steeply and the grant's funding extending through August 2030, the university appears positioned to keep expanding capacity at its West Side campus well into the coming years.
