The University of North Florida’s School of Nursing in the Brooks College of Health is turning 40 and is celebrating its anniversary with a free public lecture by inventor/technology futurist Pablos Holman. He’ll discuss “Inventing the Next 40 Years” at 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 4, in the Fine Arts Center, Lazzara Performance Hall, Building 45, on campus.
“We’re excited to be celebrating 40 years of nursing at the University,” said Dr. Li Loriz, director of UNF’s School of Nursing. “Now is the time to think about the future, where we can go and how we can meet the demands as well as the health care needs of people to come.”
The School of Nursing, the University’s first flagship program, received accreditation in 1985 and has remained accredited without recommendations throughout the years. In 1998, the nursing program admitted its first cohort of nurse practitioner students, and in the fall of 2007, the first group of Doctor of Nursing Practice students was also admitted. Nursing students graduating from the program have consistently maintained high pass rates on their licensure and certification exams for all programs, with a 100 percent employment rate within three months of graduation.
With celebrating four decades of nursing at UNF and a focus on the future, Pablos Holman was the perfect fit for the School of Nursing’s 40th anniversary celebration.
“Pablos is the perfect presenter for this event. Within the Brooks College of Health, we’ve been talking about working outside the lines and expanding our collaborations both on and off campus. His message will drive these points home in creative and entertaining ways,” said Dr. Curt Lox, Brooks College of Health dean.
Holman, a notorious hacker with a unique view into breaking and building new technologies, is consulting worldwide on invention and design projects that assimilate new technologies—making wild ideas a bit more practical and vice versa.
Currently, he’s working at the Intellectual Ventures Laboratory in Washington, where a wide variety of futuristic invention projects are underway, including a fission reactor powered by nuclear waste, a hurricane-suppressing machine, a system to reverse global warming and a device that can shoot mosquitoes out of the sky with lasers to help eradicate malaria.
Holman has informed and entertained audiences at world-renowned technology summits, including the United Nations, the World Economic Forum at Davos, the CIA, TEDx and more on invention, innovation, cyber security and the future of technology.
The UNF School of Nursing was selected as the first flagship program at the University in 2005 and offers a wide variety of programs at the undergraduate and graduate levels. The program has a community-based, population-focused curriculum corresponding to changes in health care delivery trends.
