Ascend Learning Acquires TAMS to Strengthen Faculty Operations at Nursing Schools
New addition helps nursing programs staff smarter and teach more
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BOSTON, Aug. 05, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Ascend Learning, a leading healthcare and learning technology company, today announced the acquisition of Teaching Assignment Management System (TAMS), a cloud-based platform built at Duke University to help manage teaching assignments and workload. Since its inception, TAMS has grown into a trusted faculty workload and teaching assignment platform now used by over 70 colleges and universities, including Johns Hopkins, Texas A&M, Marquette University, and numerous leading nursing schools and health sciences programs across the country. The acquisition deepens Ascend Learning’s continued investment in technologies that help institutions strengthen their programs, support faculty, and prepare the next generation of healthcare professionals.
As healthcare organizations continue to face workforce shortages, nursing programs are under increasing pressure to educate more students despite persistent faculty shortages and growing administrative complexity. And, TAMS addresses a critical gap by replacing the manual, spreadsheet-based processes that burden program administrators, with a centralized, data-driven platform. This ‘single source of truth’ brings faculty preferences, workload data, and course assignments into one place, helping institutions make more informed, equitable faculty assignment decisions.
“Nursing schools are doing extraordinary work under real pressure, and our job is to make that work easier at every level. TAMS solves a problem our customers have always had, and now they have a single trusted team behind the full picture, from faculty planning to student outcomes,” said Lissy Hu, MD, CEO of Ascend Learning.
Through ATI Nursing Education, Ascend already supports more than 60% of U.S. nursing schools with curriculum, assessment, simulation, and faculty development solutions. Across Ascend’s other healthcare brands it offers solutions that equip students, educators and schools with tools designed to help prepare healthcare professionals to enter healthcare careers and then help the healthcare employers and workforce continue learning, gain certifications, and manage career pathways and continuous professional learning throughout their careers.
TAMS complements these solutions by extending Ascend’s support of institutions beyond student learning and faculty development to the operational decisions that determine how teaching happens.
“We built TAMS at Duke because we lived the problem firsthand and knew there had to be a better way. What started as a solution for one institution has grown into a platform trusted by programs across the country. Ascend’s reach through ATI into nursing education, its commitment to building technology that genuinely serves institutions, and the depth of its existing relationships with the schools we care about deeply made this the right path forward. We share a common mission with Ascend, which makes this the right place for TAMS to grow and innovate,” said David Parrish, Founder, TAMS.
Together, Ascend now supports institutions across the full continuum, from faculty planning and workload management to student learning, competency development, and workforce readiness.
About TAMS
TAMS, the Teaching Assignment Management System, is a cloud-based platform built at Duke University that modernizes how colleges and universities manage faculty teaching assignments. Leveraging powerful data analytics, TAMS gives institutions a single system of record for faculty preferences, teaching history, and workload, eliminating the spreadsheets and manual processes that have long burdened program administrators. The result is smarter staffing decisions, more equitable workload distribution, stronger faculty engagement, and real cost savings. More than 70 institutions, with a concentration in nursing and health sciences programs, rely on TAMS to bring greater efficiency and operational clarity to their teaching assignment process.
About Ascend Learning
Ascend Learning is a leading healthcare and learning technology company. With products that span the learning continuum, Ascend focuses on high-growth careers in a range of industries, with a special focus on healthcare and other licensure-driven occupations. Ascend Learning products, from testing to certification, are used by physicians, emergency medical professionals, nurses, allied health professionals, certified personal trainers, financial advisors, skilled trades professionals and insurance brokers.
Media contacts:
Ascend@v2comms.com
