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Printer-Friendly ModeNursing program receives grants
State funding allows for additional staffing, smaller classes
August 25, 2005 —
SVSU has received two grants from the State of Michigan as part of Governor Granholm's MI Opportunity Partnership, a program designed to direct workers to high-demand career fields, such as health care.
Each grant was funded at $119,812 over two years.
SVSU will use its grants to collaborate with Bay Regional Medical Center in Bay City and Mid-Michigan Medical Center in Midland. The partner hospitals will provide one qualified nursing staff member to serve as part-time clinical faculty each semester, allowing SVSU to increase the number of nursing students it admits.
"With the two grants, we can increase our capacity and still lower our class sizes," said Jan Blecke, dean of the Crystal M. Lange College of Nursing and Health Sciences.
With the two grants, the maximum capacity for the College will now be 128 students annually, up from 80. Class sizes will be dropped from 40 students to 32.
SVSU students being taught by these additional faculty will receive the majority of their nursing practicum instruction at the corresponding hospital, Blecke said, thereby increasing the likelihood that the students become employed at the hospital after graduation.
"We want to recruit more people, and retain them," she said. "If they would like to stay there, there will be less orientation, and no recruiting needed (for the hospitals). They will also be a little more knowledgeable about what it is exactly they want to do at the hospital."
Blecke added that the new collaborations will be known as the PEP Project - Phase II. The first PEP Project, short for Partnership for Education and Practice, is a collaboration with both Covenant Healthcare and Saint Mary's of Michigan in Saginaw, privately funded by a grant from the Frank N. Andersen Foundation.
The projects are "very similar," Blecke said, noting that the first phase also provides SVSU with two additional faculty members.
"Our goal is to have a strong relationship with all agencies," Blecke said, pointing to the fact that SVSU now works with agencies in all three major regions in the area.
As part of the project, the hospital's staff members will spend the 2005 fall semester in orientation. Blecke said the new faculty will have a group of students to teach, but that a current SVSU faculty member will oversee the class as well. To stay consistent, she added, the same staff member will work with the University each semester.
A joint study by the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Growth and the Michigan Department of Community Health estimates that Michigan will need to fill more than 100,000 professional and technical health care jobs over the next decade.