The Leonard and Helen R. Stulman Charitable Foundation has committed $2 million to The Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing to establish an endowed professorship in mental health and psychiatric nursing.

The Leonard and Helen R. Stulman Professor in Mental Health and Psychiatric Nursing will be a nurse scholar, researcher, educator and clinician who will hold a joint faculty appointment in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the School of Medicine. A national search will be conducted to choose the first recipient.

"The Stulman Professorship will bring together two of Hopkins' most pre-eminent institutions, the School of Nursing and the School of Medicine, and will build upon the strengths of each to forge creative solutions for research, care and education in mental illness," said Walter D. Pinkard Jr., a trustee of the Stulman Foundation, a trustee of the university and chairman of the National Advisory Council for Johns Hopkins Nursing.

Martha N. Hill, dean of the School of Nursing, said, "We are thrilled by this gift--the first endowed professorship in the School of Nursing that incorporates a joint appointment in the School of Medicine. By developing clinical experiences for nursing students, in [both] in-patient and community settings, the Stulman Professor will enhance [the students'] understanding of debilitating mental illnesses and expose them to the rewards of a career in mental health," she said. "This professor will play an active role in attracting students to mental health nursing as a destination career."

J. Raymond DePaulo, Henry Phipps Professor and chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the School of Medicine, said nurses play a paramount role in the detection and treatment of mental illnesses, particularly those often overlooked or misdiagnosed, such as bipolar or affective disorders, and the critical shortage of specialized nurses will acutely affect the future of mental health care.

"Johns Hopkins nursing students may present one of the greatest resources of future mental health nurses," he said. "In addition, having a nurse scientist in this professorship will allow Johns Hopkins to expand the scope of its research in mental illness."

The Leonard and Helen R. Stulman Foundation was established by Leonard Stulman, a Baltimore businessman and philanthropist and Johns Hopkins alumnus, who died in 2000. In addition to Pinkard, the trustees of the foundation are Shale D. Stiller and Frank T. Gray. The foundation earlier provided funding to establish the Leonard and Helen Stulman Jewish Studies Program at Johns Hopkins.

During his lifetime, Stulman and his wife, Helen, made generous gifts to the Jewish community, the arts, music, theater and to Johns Hopkins, where they endowed the Leonard and Helen R. Stulman Professorship in History, a lecture series in history and fellowships in the humanities.