Florida’s largest university, the University of Central Florida, is graduating more nursing students than ever. And beginning this semester, it’s teaching them in a new building with a new dean in charge.
Following the retirement of the previous dean, UCF has named Sharon Tucker as the dean of its College of Nursing. She takes over as the university’s nursing program moves into the state-of-the-art Dr. Phillips Nursing Pavilion, which opened in August in Orlando’s Lake Nona community.
The nursing program was previously located in an older, smaller, retrofitted building that wasn’t originally designed to be a medical building. The new 90,000-sq.-ft. pavilion, double the size, “was designed entirely from scratch to be a great academic space for students in nursing,” Tucker says. “It’s designed to be airy and bright and light. We have lots of windows and places where students can not only learn in innovative classrooms, but also we have a lot of space for students to be able to take care of themselves. If you don’t take care of yourself, you’re not going to stay long in the nursing field, because there’s always a potential for burnout. We try to promote resilience.”
Paid for with $43 million in state funds and $29 million from private donors including AdventHealth, Orlando Health and Nemours Children’s Health, the pavilion features the latest in immersive modeling and simulation technologies to help nursing students prepare for the real thing.
“They practice with real patients too, but having their first experiences in safe environments where they can ensure that if they make a mistake, they’re not going to hurt a patient, is the best way,” Tucker says. “As much as we can use simulation and other methods to teach people how to provide the safest, high-quality care, the more likely they’re going to be great safe practitioners once they move into practices.”
The new building will also produce more nurses, which Florida needs. In the 2024-25 academic year, UCF awarded 777 undergraduate nursing degrees and 148 master’s and doctoral nursing degrees, for a total of 925 nursing degrees. The new pavilion will enable UCF to graduate an additional 150 new nurses annually to help address the state’s nursing shortage. Of UCF’s 17,000 nursing alumni, 85% live and work in Florida, the university says.
Tucker joined UCF last year as a professor and chair of the Department of Nursing Practice after holding various leadership roles at The Ohio State University. Her leadership experience, which spans two decades, also includes roles at the University of Iowa and the Mayo Clinic. She spent 15 years in hospital settings before moving into academics.
Her research focuses on “evidence-based practice,” a process that seeks to improve patient outcomes based on the most up-to-date knowledge and research. It typically takes a long time for results from the latest medical research to be used in actual clinical settings — too long, Tucker says. The idea is to accelerate that process.
“Change is hard for everybody,” she says. “It’s all about change.”