The first class of 23 students graduated in May, 1990. The Middle Tennessee State University School of Nursing educates individuals to function as professional nurses competent to meet the health care needs of individuals and groups across the life span and to adapt to future trends in health care. The philosophy of the baccalaureate nursing program is based on a framework of beliefs held about persons, environment, health, professional nursing nursing and education. People exist within a family or in other small groups, in a community and in a society. As an integral part of an open system, each person's behavior is characterized by unique responses to commonly occurring, multiple and complex interacting stimuli from both internal and external environments.
Environment comprises the living and non-living universe in which the person exists.
Environment affects the person's health status and the ability to optimize personal potential throughout the life cycle. Each person interacts with the environment and, as a result, continually grows and changes. Health is a dynamic state which fluctuates over a continuum varying from optimal wellness to death. Health involves various parameters and levels of functional performance as defined by the individual, by society and by health care professionals. Nursing, a practice discipline, has evolved as the art and science of caring for people in response to their individual, family, community and societal health care requisites and deficits.