College of Nursing receives $101 million gift to address Montana healthcare challenges

The College of Nursing at MSU will receive a $101 million philanthropic gift from Robyn and Mark Jones, founders of Goosehead Insurance, the university announced during a ceremony Monday. The gift is meant to support the university in addressing healthcare shortfalls throughout the state. 

Of Montana’s 56 counties, 52 are classified by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as medically underserved. The gift will be used to help the College of Nursing prepare more students for careers in the state to fill nursing shortages. 

“Your College of Nursing is dedicated to its core to serving Montana, and yet we have reached our limit on the number of nurses we can prepare due primarily to spacing constraints,” Sarah Shannon, Dean of MSU’s College of Nursing, said. “No more. Never again.”

Five new nursing education facilities will be funded using the Jones’ gift, one on each of MSU’s campuses. In addition to the new buildings, five endowed faculty positions will be created within the college, and an endowed scholarship fund will be established. A new certified nurse midwifery program will be created to train nurses for providing services in rural Montana communities. 

The number of registered nurses graduating from the college is expected to increase from 256 to 400 annually, and the number of doctoral students graduating as family-practice nurse practitioners and psychiatric-mental health nurse practitioners is expected to double by 2030.

“When they told us that this was happening it absolutely changes every single person in the nursing program and every single person we’re gonna be taking care of,” junior Savanah Hansen, a student in the nursing program, said. “It’s a great opportunity.”

“It is hard to put into words how moved and excited all of us are at Montana State University by the generosity of the Joneses, who are helping to address some of the most critical health care disparity issues in Montana, particularly in the state’s rural areas,” President Cruzado said. 

Robyn Jones said she and her husband, who live in Texas but have a home in Whitefish, MT, consider the state a home.

“We became convinced that our investment in expanding the capacity and capabilities of MSU’s nursing school could have a real impact on people who live in the state that we consider home and we feel privileged to be able to make this investment,” Jones said.