While most departments on campus have cut sections, the board of trustees recently approved the Nursing Programs’ $139,377 grant proposal to increase enrollment.

Dr. Erika Endrijonas, Dean of Educational Programs, says that the grant will be used for improvements in the nursing program such as: a Nursing Student Retention Specialist to work one-on-one with students to help with retention, and two Registered Nursing skill evaluators in the Allied Health Learning lab. The grant will also pay for the Test of Essential Academic skills (TEAS), which is required prior to students entering the program.

“It’s been a wonderful addition. It’s allowing us to do things we couldn’t do before,” Endrijonas said.

She also said that the grant is an extension to an existing grant. The original grant, which was an enrollment growth grant from the State Chancellor’s Office, was for $78,500 and the augmentation was for $60,877. The grant is the fourth in a series of two-year grants to increase the enrollments in the nursing program.

Endrijonas said that 56 other colleges applied for the augmentation grant.

“In exchange for this money, we are required to take an additional 5-10 students per year and some additional licensed vocational nurses and registered nursing students,” Endrijonas wrote in e-mail to The Channels.

Jane Metiu, director of the Allied Health Learning Lab, said that the grant will pay for two registered nurses to work part-time with the nursing students in the lab.

With an “associate degree in nursing, students must practice nursing skills and then be individually evaluated on those nursing skills prior to caring for patients in the local hospitals,” Metiu told The Channels in an e-mail.

Endrijonas said that the progress of spending the grant money is already in session and that the money will give the nursing program more graduates.

“It allows us to evaluate students on waiting lists and to see how strong they are and then they can work on math and English before they join the program,” Endrijonas said. She is looking forward to the increase in enrollment.

“They are happy, they know there are people on the waiting list,” Edrijonas said of the students enrolled in nursing programs.

“We can buy new equipments,” Endrijonas said. “It helps everyone, not only the new students.”