Mundinger to step down as School of Nursing dean after 27 years

After two decades with Mary O’Neil Mundinger at its helm, the School of Nursing will begin the search for a new dean.

University President Lee Bollinger and Lee Goldman, executive vice president for health and biomedical sciences and dean of the faculties of health sciences and medicine, announced Mundinger’s resignation Thursday in a jointly signed e-mail sent to students. Mundinger will hold her post until June 2010, or until a successor begins work. “We want to extend our gratitude to Dr. Mundinger for her singular service to Columbia as a devoted member of our community for 27 years,” they wrote. “A member of our faculty since 1982, Dr. Mundinger has created a lasting legacy not only at Columbia but also nationally by championing advanced practice nursing, pioneering an expanded role for nurses that emphasizes their professional autonomy and critical importance in providing comprehensive care, and creating a new clinical doctoral degree, which has been widely emulated at universities around the country.”

Bollinger and Goldman praised Mundinger for leading the school out of hard times. Mundinger took the head job when the school was at a crossroads, they wrote, with a $3 million endowment. “Dr. Mundinger, appointed acting dean in 1986 and then dean in 1988, righted the School. Her requirement that all nursing faculty establish either a faculty practice or a research program attracted skilled clinicians and researchers, whose experiences informed their teaching.” Mundinger will leave the school with an endowment greater than $100 million.

Andrew Davidson, executive vice dean of the Mailman School of Public Health, will chair the search committee charged with selecting Mundinger’s successor.