Georgetown University’s School of Nursing has received a $25 million gift from the Berkley Family Foundation — and with it, a new name.
The school will be renamed the Berkley School of Nursing during the 2025 fall semester, marking a significant milestone in the university’s 122 years of educating nurses.
The Berkley family’s gift will create opportunities to expand enrollment and educate more nurses, reduce financial barriers for students, enhance technology, strengthen faculty and staff supports, and advance student success and well-being, said Roberta Waite, dean of the School of Nursing.
“This is a transformative gift, and we are very humbled,” Waite said. “The Berkley family understands the need for graduating more nurses and the impact that nursing has on promoting the health and wellness of individuals, families and communities.”
A Commitment to Health
The Berkley family has previously established Georgetown’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, funded an endowed chair at Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business, and given to Mission & Ministry programs and Georgetown’s Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center.
The Berkley family’s investment and the school’s renaming marks a pivotal development for Georgetown’s commitment to health sciences.
“Two generations of our family have a shared love and appreciation for Georgetown University,” said W. Robert Berkley Jr. (B’95). “We have always maintained an interest in both education and health care, and the opportunity to support the School of Nursing is a natural intersection of both interests.”
Dr. Norman J. Beauchamp Jr., executive vice president for health sciences at Georgetown University Medical Center, said this latest gift will advance the medical center’s mission of cura personalis, or care of the whole person.
“This special family has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to bringing hope and healing to people in need by supporting the growth and diversity of nurse leaders and practitioners,” said Beauchamp.
“We could have no better leader than Dean Roberta Waite and no more deeply committed ensemble of faculty and staff to transform nursing to meet the needs of those we serve today and in the future. I am most grateful to the Berkley family for their trust in Georgetown, and I am genuinely excited for the path ahead.”
A Century of Training
The School of Nursing was originally established in 1903 as the Georgetown University Training School for Nurses, training nurses for the increased caregiving needs of the university’s hospital. In the decades since, the School of Nursing has evolved through significant milestones, including the launch of the region’s first nurse-midwifery program in 1972 and the school’s first online degree program in 2011.
In 2022, Georgetown separated the School of Nursing & Health Studies into two distinct entities. Waite, who brings decades of experience working to advance health equity, was named dean of the reconceptualized School of Nursing.
Through its partnership with MedStar Health, Georgetown further strengthens its dedication to nursing. In 2023, Georgetown and MedStar launched the Joint Council for Nursing to create more collaborative strategic opportunities and initiatives for nursing education and research.
The Berkley family’s investment will establish several endowed funds to support students, faculty and strategic initiatives at the nursing school, as it continues its tradition of academic excellence.
Addressing Critical Nursing Vacancies
A cornerstone of the gift is the Berkley Endowed Scholarship Fund, which benefits students who are pursuing a second degree to enter nursing through the Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing (ABSN) program. These students already hold degrees in other fields but have discovered a passion for nursing later in their careers.
Waite said the program’s students represent a vital pathway to address nursing vacancies across the country. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, more than 100,000 registered nurses left the workforce from 2020-2021. While nurses are returning after the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. still faces a significant shortage, the report shared.
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine also outlined additional factors contributing to the need for more nurses, including the aging U.S. population, increases in mental and behavioral health conditions, a growing lack of access to primary health care, high maternal mortality rates, and a worsening physician shortage.
The Berkley scholarship fund aims to address these shortages by removing financial barriers for promising nursing candidates.
“Finances can be an enormous issue for people who might discover their passion for nursing later in their career and wish to obtain a second degree,” Waite said. “A lot of these individuals are interested in working at the bedside in acute care settings, so if we can create an accessible pathway for them by offsetting and alleviating the burden of the cost of tuition, it’s really a win-win scenario. The Berkley family gift is reducing that burden.”
Waite also notes the “ripple effect” in investing in later-career students.
“What’s so impactful is that we know many of those individuals will go back and live and practice within their own communities,” she said. “So as we’re able to capture a broader and more diverse range of people, they can offer a glimpse of what nursing can be to people within their own circles and communities.”
Promoting Student Well-being and Success
The gift also establishes the Berkley Endowed Student Success and Wellbeing Fund, which will provide resources like tutoring, mentoring, stress management and resilience skills to support students’ mental health and personal and professional development.
The fund will lay the foundation for student success and well-being — a key philanthropic priority, Waite said, to ensure nursing students have the skills and resources to manage their academic careers and future health careers.
“Supporting our students with tools that can help them be proactive in mitigating stress is critical for them to care for themselves and promote their own well-being now and throughout their nursing career,” Waite said.
She envisions a culture of well-being that extends to faculty and staff as well.
“We cannot teach our students if we’re not also modeling that behavior,” she said.
Investing in Faculty and Technology
Faculty excellence is another pillar of the Berkley family’s gift, which establishes endowed professorship and associate professorship funds. In a competitive academic landscape, these endowments will help attract even more top-tier educators and researchers, Waite said.
“Endowed professorships are critical to attracting the highest caliber faculty who are also aligned with our values,” she said. “These investments not only recognize their talent but also provide them with the funding to carry out their work while they’re educating students and mentoring staff and faculty.”
In addition to investing in faculty, the gift will invest in technology to advance virtual reality capabilities in the O’Neill Family Foundation Simulation Center, which enables students to practice clinical and communication skills in a controlled, simulated environment before entering real health care settings. The technological advancements will be accessible to both on-campus and remote students.
“Technology is really what will move the needle in terms of enhancing the experience of our in-person students as well as those who are learning virtually or in a hybrid setting,” Waite said. “Virtual reality is a core part of that.”
Recognizing Nursing’s Value
Students will also be able to pursue emerging opportunities through the Berkley family’s Endowed Dean’s Fund for Strategic Initiatives and Nursing Excellence. Waite said this discretionary fund is essential for maintaining momentum and agility in a rapidly changing health care landscape.
“We’re at a point now where we have a more sophisticated foundation — our structure, our people, our understanding — and there’s real momentum building at the nursing school,” she said. “We’re developing new academic pathways, certificate programs, and refreshing our existing offerings. In this environment of rapid innovation, flexibility becomes essential. The Berkley family’s gift represents a significant recognition of nursing’s importance in health care,” Waite said.
“Nursing as a profession has only received one penny of every dollar that goes into health care philanthropy,” she said. “Yet, we’re 20.7 million strong, the largest licensed health care profession and voted the most trusted profession for over 20 years.”
“This gift honors the importance of our work in the formation of students, and shaping leaders, in a values-based environment like Georgetown.”