It might best be described as a gift to insure the health of our School of Nursing.

A group of local State Farm insurance agents decided to donate to our campaign to raise $21 million for a new School of Nursing facility, and with dollar-for-dollar matching funds from the State Farm foundation, their gift totals $25,000.

In recognition of that generosity, a classroom in the new facility — the first that will be specifically built to accommodate our 25-year-old nursing program — will be named in honor of State Farm and the individual agents who contributed to the campaign.

State Farm agents, from left, Joe Wilson, Suzanne Worrell, Carolyn Morrison and Phil Marshall.

Those agents include Phil Marshall of Overton County and Carolyn Morrison, Joe Wilson and Suzanne Worrell, all of Putnam County.

“We recognize TTU’s need for a new nursing facility because it will help local students who are interested in pursuing a nursing career get a quality education without having to leave the Upper Cumberland,” Worrell says.

It’s already the region’s prime source of registered nurses, and while a national nursing shortage that projects up to a million job vacancies by 2010 is forcing medical facilities in some areas to seek nurses educated in other countries, many credit our program with helping to alleviate such severe nursing shortages here.

“In fact, most people can now get the medical services they need right here in the Upper Cumberland because of a local commitment to providing quality health care, and we want to see TTU’s nursing program keep pace,” Morrison says.

A new building would help the academic program do that by providing state-of-the-art classrooms, clinical labs and faculty facilities, a 300-seat auditorium and other conference and meeting rooms, an updated Student Health Services facility and a $4 million rural health center.

In addition to technological progress, though, quality nursing also requires the need for a human touch.

“You can’t teach nursing the same way you teach engineering, business or any other program," says Wilson. "It requires small classes and hands-on experience because computers alone just can’t take care of sick people."

Marshall agrees, saying, “I support TTU’s fund-raising effort for a new nursing building because it’s an endeavor to further the progress of both higher education and health care in the Upper Cumberland.”

For more information about the nursing campaign, call University Development at 3055 or check out the “Giving to TTU” link at www.tntech.edu.