CNU's History
California Northstate University (CNU) is a new institution dedicated to educating, developing, and training individuals to provide competent, patient-centered care. The University was developed after the successful launch of the College of Pharmacy in 2007. The founders of the College of Pharmacy built a progressive program that includes active learning, direct patient experiences, and research.
Senior operations staff at the College of Pharmacy began discussions for a new medical school in the greater Sacramento area early in the spring of 2010 as a result of several recent publications and studies which indicated the need for an increase in the number of primary care physicians trained in California.
With the recent federal health care initiatives in combination with the needs of the aging baby-boomer population, primary care physicians are seeing ever increasing patient loads. It was also recognized that as a result of the financial crisis facing California, the State was unable to increase the number of medical students trained by the state. CNU's College of Medicine (CNUCOM) is directly helping the primary care physician shortage in California.
Since this time, a College of Health Sciences, a College of Psychology and a Master of Pharmaceutical Sciences program were successfully launched. Following these successful inaugural professional schools and academic programs, CNU is set to open the College of Dental Medicine (now) in spring 2022 as well as our new Masters of Healthcare Administration program in Spring 2021.
Our Master of Healthcare Administration (MHA) degree complements the University mission “to advance the science and art of healthcare”. We will prepare early to mid-careerists with the industry knowledge and business administration skills required to pursue potential leadership positions in healthcare management such as: health service administrators, managers, analysts, entrepreneurs, and eventually, executive leadership. We cultivate entrepreneurial mindsets geared towards innovating and engineering healthcare systems of the future while corresponding to the societal need of producing ethical and responsible leaders. Through this transformational change, leaders will deliver improved healthcare delivery systems through operational excellence. Foundational concepts and competencies prescribed by the Healthcare Leadership Alliance (HLA) have been incorporated into the curriculum.
Our pedagogy includes the Interprofessional Education framework that will yield collaborative leaders who aim to communicate empathetically among their teams. Students include: aspiring medical doctors, nurses, psychologists, pharmacists, administrators, marketers, operation managers, data analysts, accountants, health insurance managers, IT managers and engineers, start up owners and anyone who seeks to complement their field of studies in healthcare. CNU serves as the West Coast educational catalyst to deliver cutting-edge and proven technologies in analytics and intelligence (A.I.) that will optimize healthcare delivery systems.