A trip to a rural part of Kentucky changed the career goals of North Greenville University students Adraina Vasquez and Rachel Dobbins.
Tuesday morning, the announcement of a partnership between North Greenville and the University of South Carolina Upstate further changed their path. The two universities announced a program aimed at addressing a national and statewide nursing shortage.
“We had a huge opportunity last semester to go to Kentucky, and in that area, there weren’t a lot of nurses. It was very rural, so they didn’t have a lot of nurses,” Vasquez said. “We saw the problems they had, and I think that kind of influenced us. When (North Greenville College of Science and Mathematics program coordinator Susan) Allen told us about the opportunity, we said we should just do it. It was our backup plan, anyway, and we can specialize in the areas we want to.”
Biology students at North Greenville with an interest in nursing will be able to earn two degrees in five years.
Students can earn a bachelor’s degree in biology after their fourth year, and would be awarded a bachelor’s degree in nursing after their fifth.
Vasquez and Dobbins are set to be two of the first eight North Greenville students to enter the USC Upstate Mary Black School of Nursing through the program.
“A student interested in becoming a nurse can come to North Greenville University in the biology program, and in three years, they can take the required general curriculum and every science course necessary for the success of a biology graduate,” said Tom Allen, dean of the College of Science and Mathematics at North Greenville. “The general electives and biology electives that biology majors are usually required to take will be pushed into the fourth year, which will become their first year in the nursing program.”
Students’ first three years will be spent on the North Greenville campus, with the final two years being spent at either the USC Upstate campus in Spartanburg of the university’s campus in Greenville.
“I think we are all interested in the same thing, and that’s going to the hospital and putting ourselves in the care of people that are very well trained,” said USC Upstate Chancellor Brendan Kelly. “There is no better product of that training than the graduates of the USC Upstate Mary Black School of Nursing.”
.embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; } .embed-container iframe, .embed-container object, .embed-container embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; }
North Greenville will provide a list of students each year to be admitted into the Mary Black School of Nursing.
Qualified students will have completed applications and have kept an overall 3.0 GPA or above and a 2.5 GPA in the required sciences, have completed requirements for clinical hours, have passed the pre-admission assessment and met the approval of North Greenville faculty.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services National Center for Health Workforce Analysis estimated that there would be an estimated nursing shortage of nearly 10,400 nurses across the country.
“Times have changed, and any school has to evolve with that change,” said Katharine Gibb, dean of the Mary Black School of Nursing. “The more complex patient care gets, the more educated and experienced our nurses need to be.”
Dobbins, a Wade Hampton High School graduate from Greenville County, and Vasquez, from Lancaster, said they are confident the partnership will help them land in the workforce faster.
“There’s a big shortage of nursing students right now, and this is an opportunity for us to serve in those underprivileged areas, like the rural areas of South Carolina,” Dobbins said.