By Sara Shepherd

The University of Kansas School of Nursing could have taken the easy route to align its curriculum with new national requirements. Instead, it seized the opportunity to do something bold.

The school razed its old curriculum and rebuilt it from the ground up. In just under two years, KU created a new competency-based trajectory for educating nurses that’s expected to become a model for other nursing schools nationwide. The revamped curriculum prepares KU nursing graduates to hit the ground running, trained to serve the healthcare demands of the future.

“We’re not here to take the easy route, we’re here to be the best that we can be for nursing and for Kansas,” said KU School of Nursing Dean Jean Giddens, Ph.D., RN, FAAN, ANEF. “You really aren’t revisioning nursing with just minor tweaks around the edges. This is a completely different approach to how we structure the education and how we evaluate that education.”

Launching in fall 2026, KU’s new nursing curriculum represents a fundamental change to nursing education. It will place incoming students in new courses that are organized along innovative tracks so that didactic learning is seamlessly followed by hands-on application of skills. Students will have new requirements for demonstrating competencies — specifically, showing through the classroom, simulations and clinical learning experiences that they don’t just know the material but also can do it.

“It’s not just about passing the NCLEX (National Council Licensure Examination). It’s not just passing their courses,” said Caélee Lehman, project manager for the curriculum redesign. “It’s about knowing that students can competently demonstrate those skills, and we’ve built them a curriculum where they’re going to do that from Day 1.”

The curriculum also includes some new programs.

Key among them is the region’s only direct-entry Master of Science in Nursing degree program, launching in fall 2027. The direct-entry program is designed exclusively for students who hold a bachelor’s degree in a non-nursing discipline who want to enter the nursing profession. Graduates will experience didactic, simulation and clinical experiences required for licensure as an entry-level registered nurse.

Part of a curriculum trend nationwide, the direct-entry program aims to attract students who previously may not have realized the career opportunities nursing provides.

Prologue to a redesign

KU’s curriculum redesign embraces the goals of the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) Essentials, which define what nursing graduates should know and be able to do upon graduation. Following the AACN Essentials is required for accreditation with the AACN’s Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education (CCNE).

Rewinding a few years, the KU School of Nursing dean herself led the effort to develop the AACN’s national standards. Giddens was co-chair of the AACN task force that created the Essentials released in 2021.

The process involved soliciting feedback from heathcare practice partners nationwide, who reported inconsistency among graduates of different nursing schools as well as a gap between what nurses knew and what they could do with that knowledge right out of school.

“Nationally there was a disconnect between the educational programming in academic nursing and what was needed for the future,” Giddens said.

“The AACN knew we needed to change nursing education from what we had been doing for the last 30 years.”

In her previous position as dean of the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Nursing, Giddens led an overhaul of the curriculum there. After joining KU in 2024, Giddens also sought to adopt the AACN model as it was intended, which required going all-in on a curriculum redesign.

KU could have taken a “map and gap” approach, considering all the competencies required by the AACN Essentials then simply adding them into the existing curriculum. Instead, KU created a new product from scratch.

Shaking up the status quo

Going all-in meant giving KU faculty the resources they needed for the redesign, including hiring a designated project manager, Lehman. It also meant giving the team free rein to think big.

“Instead of retrofitting what already existed, we got to say, ‘If we could build this from the ground up, what’s our luxury model going to look like?’ And that’s what we were able to create,” Lehman said.

The process was innovative and progressive, said Lehman, whose background includes student affairs, career services and accreditation.

Doing things because that’s how they’ve always been done went out the window, she said. Input from outsiders was considered, including students, practice partners and national nursing education consultants. The project manager, a non-nurse, had a seat at the table and agency to challenge long-held status-quos.

“The faculty were really brilliant in that they put a lot of assumptions aside about what nursing has to be — to build what they think nursing can be,” Lehman said.

Historically in higher education, including nursing programs, emphasis has been on the input, or what students are taught, said Laura Klenke-Borgmann, Ph.D., RN, CHSE, KU School of Nursing associate dean for undergraduate programs and the chair of KU’s curriculum redesign task force. But input doesn’t always translate into students’ ability to apply the information they’ve learned.

KU’s new nursing curriculum and evaluation requirements flip the focus on its head.

“It’s not going to just be about what we tell them, and what we put into the curriculum,” Klenke-Borgmann said. “It’s going to be about what can they actually do, and what can they actually show us because of the curriculum.”

New learning trajectory

Given the hands-on nature of nursing, closing the “academic-practice gap” is especially critical, KU School of Nursing leaders said.

Traditionally the first part of nursing school has leaned heavily on lectures and book learning, with hands-on practice taking place, at times, long after the didactic lessons. The new curriculum is organized by topic, so lectures and readings about a certain skill will be directly followed by hands-on practice and demonstration requirements for that skill.

Clusters of courses that build on one another are stacked vertically — not unlike an undergraduate biology course in which the related lab occurs the same week as the lecture.

“They’ve mapped the curriculum in ways where you’re learning content on a Tuesday and you’re applying it on a Thursday, instead of learning it in Week 2 and applying it in Week 8, or two semesters later,” Lehman said.

Now each semester will include an applied practice course for hands-on learning, along with specific assignments to assess competency. Applied practice courses will include clinical hours; lab time for practice of psychomotor skills such as giving shots or putting in IVs; and immersive simulation scenarios where students act as nurses making decisions in real time.

As one example, Klenke-Borgmann pointed to teaching physical assessment across the lifespan.

• First students will learn about physical assessments in the classroom: how to do them, why we listen to the lungs and heart, where to check pulses.
• Then in the applied practice component of the same semester, they’ll try those skills in the lab and in simulation: use a stethoscope, listen to a partner’s lungs, palpate their pulse.
• Next, in the applied practice component students will apply the new skills clinically: practice them on real patients in the hospital or other practice settings.
• Lastly, Signature assignments are milestones that occur at the end of each semester and serve as competency-based assessments. They allow students to demonstrate, in a clear and tangible way, how they can integrate and apply the key knowledge and skills from the semester.

Mary K. Fey, Ph.D., RN, ANEF, FAAN, is an AACN Essentials coach and associate director at the Center for Medical Stimulation in Boston, Massachusetts. Through her private consulting company, Fey was an external consultant who reviewed KU’s new nursing curriculum.

Fey cited KU’s new Signature assignments, noting they were unique and showed a thoughtful approach to increasing complexity across the curriculum. She also praised how the curriculum aligned nursing’s “Spheres of Care” with the overall purpose of each semester.

“This is such a brilliant approach,” Fey said, “as it integrates concepts for the students so that they are not learning one thing in the classroom, while doing something completely different in their clinical rotations.”

KU’s new approach is expected to be more engaging and more confidence-building for nursing students, Klenke-Borgmann said. She noted there’s a big difference between getting an A on a test and proving to yourself that you can ace a hands-on situation with a patient.

“If we can get their educational environment to mimic and look and feel more like their practice environment, we feel like that will set them up for better success and serve them well for transition to practice,” she said.

“I really do think we’ll see a change in their level of confidence in their first job with this new curriculum.”

Navigating change

Overhauling KU’s nursing curriculum required courage, difficult conversations and hard work, team leaders said. That hard work will continue as the school phases in the new curriculum, running two curriculums at the same time for several semesters. 

Faculty engagement and transparency was a priority, Klenke-Borgmann said. The process involved surveys seeking feedback from faculty and nurses in practice at each stage.

“The curriculum belongs to the faculty,” she said. “We never wanted the process to seem like it was closed off with a select group of people in a conference room with the door shut.”

Giddens said she knew the KU School of Nursing faculty was up to the challenge.

“I knew that we had the talent,” Giddens said. “I knew that we had a great faculty here who could pull it off, and they have.”

Leaders expect KU’s new curriculum will have an impact beyond the KU School of Nursing, both in the nurses it produces and in other nursing schools it may inspire.

Redesigning nursing education is a sea change, Giddens said. However, it’s critical for keeping up with changes happening in healthcare. That fueled her confidence in tackling the project.

“You lead with the right thing to do,” Giddens said. “This is where the world is going, and the public depends on nurses to be at their best. How can we argue against making the adjustments needed for the future?”

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