Abstract: A request from the nurses of Sri Lanka led to the establishment of the country’s first university nursing program. Delivered by distance, the program represented a collaborative, approach among a Sri Lankan university (The Open University of Sri Lanka), a Canadian university (Athabasca University) and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), who funded the project. The challenges facing this undertaking included the lack of available culturally appropriate course materials, the English language proficiency of prospective students, the unavailability of nursing and related literature and the student lack of ready accessibility to communications technology. The lack of nurses qualified to assume university faculty positions was an additional challenge. Seven years after the firsty intake of students, the OUSL BScN remains the country’s nursing degree program. In spite of small number of graduates, evaluation reveals that graduates are making a contribution to improving the nursing care of citizens while re-defining the traditional expectations of nurses. Success bring new challenges; among them is the need for educators and health planners to increase collaboration in order to further raise the levels of health care by continuing to improve the quality of nursing education.