Marquette University is slated to unveil its expanded and newly renovated Direct Entry Master of Science in Nursing (MSN) Program site in Pleasant Prairie this week as part of its plan to educate 5,000 new nurses during the next decade.

The new site is double the size of the program’s original space in Pleasant Prairie and has triple the capacity for fundamentals training, with more than a dozen new hospital beds in the skills lab. The new site also has a larger simulation center with newly outfitted hospital and patient rooms, a simulated apartment for community care experiences and high tech, lifelike manikins.

Marquette has two MSN programs, one on-campus in Milwaukee and the other in Pleasant Prairie that opened in 2016.

The Milwaukee-based program is entirely in person and turns out about 56 MSN graduates each year. Pleasant Prairie’s hybrid program, in which students complete coursework online, but take exams, and participate in clinicals and labs, in-person, has two “program starts” each year, turning out 192 students annually.

All of Marquette’s MSN programs offer advanced nursing courses, immersive simulations, and clinical rotations at health care facilities in greater Milwaukee, southeast Wisconsin, and northeast Illinois, turning out masters-degree holding nurses within 19 to 21 months.

“The expanded Pleasant Prairie site will take the university’s nursing education to an even higher level, enabling students to pursue new opportunities, advanced practice certifications and step forward as a nursing leader,” said Dr. Karen Robinson, interim assistant dean of graduate studies in the university’s College of Nursing.

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