Nursing news briefs

School of Nursing co-founder Gordon Moore dies

Gordon Moore, co-founder of the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing at UC Davis and Intel Corporation, died in March at 94. After his success at Intel made him a billionaire, Moore and his wife of 72 years, Betty, focused on philanthropy, creating the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation which invests in environmental conservation, science and patient care.

UC Davis received a $100 million commitment in 2007 to launch an innovative nursing school. Bearing Mrs. Moore’s name and dedicated to transforming health systems and education, the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing opened its doors to the first students in 2010.

After the initial commitment, the foundation continued investing in the School of Nursing; in 2017, a $5 million grant founded the Family Caregiving Institute, dedicated to supporting the more than 40 million caregivers in the U.S. In 2019, a $37.5 million investment (and recently $7.4 million more) launched the Betty Irene Moore Fellowship for Nurse Leaders and Innovators. In the past 13 years, the school has launched six graduate-degree programs, graduated more than 1,000 alumni, and is ranked among the top 25 U.S. nursing schools by U.S. News & World Report.

In 2017, Gordon and Betty Moore were recognized as California’s most generous philanthropists. To date, their foundation has donated more than $5.1 billion to charitable causes since its founding in 2000.

Fellowship for nurse leaders expands

A $7.4 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation announced in March will expand the Betty Irene Moore Fellowship for Nurse Leaders and Innovators at the School of Nursing. The new grant increases the number of future fellows and builds upon the momentum of the first three cohorts, who have had significant national impact. The fellowship itself is innovative in that it supports early-to-midcareer nurse scientists who bring diversity of perspectives and thought; the fellowship funds their prototype development and exploratory work not typically funded by the NIH, such as mobile applications for health intervention, artificial intelligence to identify patients at risk of certain conditions, and new tools to help prevent readmissions. In the past three years of the program, 32 early-career nursing scholars have developed their potential to accelerate leadership in nursing science research, practice, education, policy and entrepreneurship.

National Black Nurses Association awardee

The National Black Nurses Association (NBNA) has named Aron King, M.S., R.N., a 2022 Under 40 Awardee. King, an assistant nurse manager at UC Davis Medical Center and 2021 graduate from the School of Nursing, is one of only 16 nurses in the nation to receive the honor. After caring for patients as a bedside nurse for 8 years, King entered the master’s-degree leadership program at the School of Nursing in 2019. He is currently a student of the school’s Ph.D. program.