Chestnut Hill College to Kick Off Construction at SugarLoaf Campus in Support of New Nursing Clinical Arts Center Set to Open Fall 2025
PHILADELPHIA, PA: On Tuesday, November 19th, at 11 am on its SugarLoaf campus (9220 Germantown Ave. Phila, Pa, 19118), Chestnut Hill College will host a construction kickoff ceremony and indoor groundbreaking to celebrate renovations to the property which will be home to two new nursing programs starting in Fall 2025. The programs, which include a traditional BSN and accelerated second-degree ABSN, were created in alignment with the College’s mission, and to help fill a local and national need to combat a nursing shortage brought on in part by burnout from the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Chestnut Hill College’s curriculum will focus on preparing nurses who are practice ready by assuring that our students have immersive clinical experiences, current knowledge to prepare them for an aging population and perhaps most important, the skills and knowledge to care for themselves so as to prevent burnout and compassion fatigue in this demanding career,” notes Susan Apold, Ph.D., RN, ANP, BC, A/GNP,C, FAAN, FAANP, director of nursing at Chestnut Hill College, and a nurse/ nursing educator of more than 20 years.
Apold’s vision has been supported by the College’s Nursing Advisory Board and Pennsylvania Board of Nursing, which approved the new mission-centric programs in May 2024.
Understanding the value of clinical education and real-world experience, the College’s nursing program features an immersive format, differentiating it from other programs in the market. The College has partnered with several local hospitals and healthcare facilities, included among them St. Joseph Villa, which allows the College to further support its mission as a sponsored work of the Sisters of Saint Joseph. The Ambassador’s Fund for Catholic Education has provided a grant in support of this expanded partnership.
Additionally, according to Apold, this approach goes above and beyond traditional nursing programs by recognizing the unprecedented challenges faced by today’s healthcare
providers and integrating current research on nursing resilience and coping mechanisms to produce nursing students equipped with the skills not only to handle the demands of the profession, but also to identify and manage stressors while practicing self-care.
To support the creation of this new nursing program, Chestnut Hill College raised over $4 million in funds including a $400,000 RACP Grant from the state of Pennsylvania thanks to the dedicated and diligent efforts of State Representative Tarik Khan and State Senator Art Haywood.
The total monies raised will fund renovations to the SugarLoaf campus, transforming the former conference center site into a state-of-the-art instructional facility. Included at this site will be a new basic skills lab, teaching and office spaces, and a health assessment lab, among other spaces. In addition, the College is upgrading our existing science labs at Saint Joseph Hall to coincide with the launch of nursing and the creation of the Regina Cuta-Papa endowed professors of biology and chemistry.
“As we celebrate 100 years of commitment to holistic education, Chestnut Hill College is excited to bring a new immersive nursing program to the Philadelphia-area,” says Brian McCloskey, D.M., MBA, interim president of the College. “Adding nursing to a robust program of sciences already in existence at the College will be beneficial not just to our students but to the populations they will serve in healthcare. I cannot think of a better way to align with our mission of service to the ‘Dear Neighbor’ without distinction than through a nursing program that prioritizes care and concern for both the practitioners and their patients.”
For more information on CHC’s Nursing Clinical Arts Center, visit www.chc.edu/nursing.