Foundation for the Future

“Every journey in nursing begins with a commitment.”

The other day as I was walking down the main staircase of the Pinkard Building, I looked right and admired the beauty of spring’s arrival just beyond the wall of windows. To my left, the absolutely best and brightest of nursing students quizzed and urged each other on in makeshift hallway study spaces on the building’s first three floors. I’d earlier passed a cluster of PhD candidates working on a literature review in a small side room and visiting high school students scrambling to address an “emergency” in the simulation lab. And I thought, “We pack a lot of learning into this space.”

Walk that walk with me every day and you will understand why there’s not just talk of improving and expanding our physical space at the School of Nursing. We’ve got a smart, solid plan to build onto the home that opened in the late 1990s so that it will meet the educational and nursing needs of the future. Today begins a journey, as the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing lays the groundwork for a new addition on the East Baltimore medical campus that will change nursing education forever.

Every journey in nursing begins with a commitment—to the profession, to ourselves, to our communities, and to the future. And this new structure, essentially adding five stories, a gleaming façade, a community presence, and spaces for innovation, interprofessional cooperation, contemplation, and so much more, helps fulfill a commitment we make to any and all faculty and nursing students who arrive here. You will not find a better learning environment anywhere else.

A state-of-the-art facility at its ribbon-cutting in 1998, the iconic Pinkard Building has remained a hub of nursing education mostly through the creativity and resolve of the faculty, students, and staff who have made it our home.

It has been the dreams, ideas, vision, and selflessness of so many in our family—some of whom will not even work, teach, or study in East Baltimore by the time the addition is finished—that have brought us to this point. To the students who will have graduated and the faculty and staff who might no longer be here by the time work is finished: Your spirit will remain in the walls, the open spaces, the innovation, and the education, for it is you who inspired us to make an even better space for those who will walk in your footsteps. And it is the generosity of our donors that will carry us forward.

Future members of the Johns Hopkins Nursing community will stand on their shoulders and be awed at the view.

We’ve got work to do between then and now, of course. But I am personally thrilled by the possibilities and cannot wait to say, “Pardon our dust.”

Read on for more on the building plans and what the addition will mean to our community and to nursing. And of course, enjoy the rest of the Spring 2017 issue of Johns Hopkins Nursing as well.