$2.3M in Federal Grants Awarded for Graduate Nursing Students at Francis Marion University

Two new federal grants totaling over $2 million in scholarships and incentivized loans were recently awarded to the School of Health Sciences at Francis Marion University (FMU) to help master’s level nursing students. Both awards were given by the US Department of Health and Human Service’s Health Resources and Services Administration, part of a package of over $149 million in awards announced in July.

The awards available to FMU nursing students come from two distinct programs. The first is Scholarships for Disadvantaged Students which provides over $500,000 in scholarships for tuition and other costs of FMU’s Master of Science in Nursing Family Nurse Practitioner program. In addition, the Nursing Faculty Loan Program will provide loans for MSN Nurse Educator students with 85% of those loans able to be forgiven if students serve as full-time faculty at an accredited nursing school for four years after graduation. The FMU scholarship program is expected to fund 24 Family Nurse Practitioner students and is a four-year award renewable at the end of the award period.

President of FMU, Dr. Fred Carter, says the two recently awarded grants are just part of the university’s ambitious efforts for health care education. FMU has seen enormous success in furthering health care education over recent years, moving them to establish new programs and build new facilities. Now the university is focusing on financial support to assist their dedicated nursing students in paying for their education. Dean of the School of Health Sciences at FMU, Dr. Ruth Wittmann-Price, says the scholarship and loan programs are expected to further accelerate growth of the graduate nursing programs at the university. Both new scholarship and loan programs will go into effect this fall.