About UF College of Nursing Care. Lead. Inspire. Boldly.

The college is consistently ranked in the top ten percent of all graduate degree-awarding nursing schools in the nation, and is currently ranked in the top 4% of all baccalaureate-degree awarding nursing schools in the nation.

A state flagship, the college’s BSN graduating class is among the largest in the state each year, and graduates consistently exceed state and national pass rates on the NCLEX_RN licensure exam.

UF began the first master’s and the first doctoral programs in the state.

Currently the average GPA for BSN graduates is between 3.5 and 3.6, and 82% pursue graduate education within one year of earning the BSN.

Ranked in the top 25 graduate and undergraduate programs by U.S. News & World Report.

The UF College of Nursing’s online RN-to-BSN program comprises part of UF Online, the No. 1 online bachelor’s program in the nation, according to U.S. News & World Report.

Today, there are over 12,000 alumni of the College of Nursing, practicing in every state and across the globe, including some of the most influential leaders in nursing and health policy, most notably Linda Harman Aiken, PhD, FAAN, FRCN, RN.

Founded in 1956, the UF College of Nursing is one of six colleges in the UF Academic Health Center, which is one of the most comprehensive academic health care centers in the Southeast.

The College’s founder and first dean, Dorothy M. Smith, pioneered new and controversial approaches to nursing education and practice when she developed a school where knowledge-based clinical excellence was the norm for administrators, faculty members, staff nurses and students alike.

The UF College of Nursing collaborates with the other Academic Health Center colleges – Dentistry, Public Health & Health Professions, Medicine, Pharmacy and Veterinary Medicine – as well as with the UF Health Shands Hospital System and more than 40 other programs, institutes and centers of excellence located within the University and the UF Academic Health Center.

The College now has over 80 faculty members and about 500 undergraduate students and 400 graduate students in two departments: Biobehavioral Nursing Science and Family, Community and Health System Science.

The college’s degree programs are accredited by the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education, which issued its recommendation for the best-possible 10-year accreditation in the spring of 2022.

The college is a member of the Council on Collegiate Education for Nursing of the Southern Regional Education Board and the American Association of Colleges of Nursing.

Graduates of nurse practitioner tracks are eligible for the relevant national certification examination in each area of clinical specialization and for state of Florida licensure.

The College of Nursing building is housed in the 173,000 square foot Health Professions/Nursing/Pharmacy complex. The state-of-the-art facility provides ample space for the college’s classrooms, offices, and research laboratories, and houses shared resources with the other colleges including a 500-seat auditorium, student services center, and other facilities.

The UF College of Nursing Jacksonville campus is supported by on-site nursing faculty members who serve on various UF Health Jacksonville and University of Florida campus committees. Students are taught by faculty members from the Gainesville and Jacksonville campuses via traditional classrooms, teleconferencing and web-based delivery methods. Students rotate through the various clinical settings of the UF Health Jacksonville campus, as well as the UF Health primary care and specialty care centers located throughout northeast Florida. In addition to UF Health locations, nursing students are also placed at other clinical sites and medical centers in the metropolitan area.

Six endowed chairs/professors who are international experts in nursing and health care.

College faculty receive funding from a number of sources including the National Institute for Nursing Research, the National Science Foundation, the John A. Hartford Foundation and the Health Resources and Services Administration.

Students are actively involved with faculty members’ research, thus helping students understand and value clinical research. Undergraduate nursing students are encouraged to be a part of the UF Scholars program, which allows them to shadow a nursing faculty researcher, while nursing doctoral students receive strong mentoring and support in pursuit of their dissertation research.

Research facilities at UF are state-of-the-art with access to facilities such as the  Clinical and Translational Research Building.

Through affiliations, partnerships and the college’s faculty practice initiatives, faculty members and students provide clinical care to patients in community settings and clinics, statewide home health care, the Veterans Administration system, the UF Health system and hospitals and outpatient settings across north Florida.

In 1998, the college incorporated its Faculty Practice Association, which allows the generation of income used to strengthen the college’s education and research programs, and provides financial incentives to practicing faculty members. For both undergraduate and graduate nursing students, practice sites serve as extended classrooms, where they can join faculty members in providing care. Twenty-two faculty members work at more than 15 sites across the region.

Archer Family Health Care is the college’s nurse-led primary care practice and provides high-quality health care to mostly underserved populations in rural Archer and surrounding communities. Approximately 80% of the practice’s patients have incomes below the 125% poverty level, and more than 60% of AFHC patients have no other source of health insurance.  The practice is a federally designated Rural Health Clinic and has become a national model.