Bushnell University gets $250,000 grant to expand nursing program

Bushnell University’s nursing pipeline got a fresh boost with a $250,000 grant from the Lane Community Health Council, money the school will use over two years to expand enrollment and push more graduates toward rural health jobs. The award came as part of the council’s final round of community grants, and Bushnell was one of 29 Lane County nonprofit organizations selected.

The funding is aimed squarely at the bottlenecks that limit nurse training in smaller communities. In year one, Bushnell plans to add staff so it can grow its network of clinical placement sites, especially in rural and underserved settings. In year two, the university will use the grant to expand faculty, a move that should allow the School of Nursing to admit more students.

That matters in Lane County, where recruiting and keeping health care workers has been a persistent problem. Bushnell’s own nursing materials say its Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing program is a 12-month face-to-face track, and the university says its School of Nursing offers multiple pathways into registered nursing. The ABSN launched in January 2022 with 16 students per cohort, then was approved to double to as many as 32 students per cohort, or 64 students a year.

Bushnell is already using its graduates as evidence that the model can work. The program has posted a 100% first-time NCLEX-RN pass rate across seven cohorts, and Bushnell says every ABSN graduate has landed a nursing job. More than 60% of those graduates stayed in Lane County, and more than 85% stayed in Oregon, signs that the school is feeding the local workforce instead of exporting it.

The new grant also builds on a much larger investment. In May 2024, the Lane Community Health Council awarded Bushnell $2.5 million for nursing workforce expansion, a grant tied to Oregon’s shortage of almost 22,000 nurses. That earlier funding and the new award both point to the same goal: train more nurses, keep more of them here, and strengthen access to medically necessary care in places that struggle most to recruit providers.

The Spring 2026 grant round also sent dollars to Cascades Community Placement Services, Eugene Springfield Fire, FOOD For Lane County, PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center Foundation, Planned Parenthood of Southwestern Oregon, Rural Organizing Project, United Way of Lane County, the University of Oregon, Volunteers In Medicine Clinic and White Bird Clinic. For Bushnell, the test will be whether the money produces more clinical sites, more seats, and more nurses serving Lane County’s rural communities long after the grant is spent.