Nursing expands west

Photo by Kanji Takeno

TU nursing expansion thriving in Hagerstown

by Stuart Zang

In a move to address the state’s acute nursing shortage, the Department of Nursing’s Hagerstown extension is expanding both in TU-educated faculty and nursing students.

Last fall, the Western Maryland site enrolled its first cohort of 16 students at the University System of Maryland’s Hagerstown facility. Jacquelyn Jordan, Department of Nursing chairperson, said the satellite campus addresses several needs.

“At Towson's main campus, we admitted cohorts of 56 students twice a year to our nursing program, until this fall, when we ramped up to 72 students per enrollment,” says Jordan. “Despite that, TU reluctantly turns away approximately 500 students a year, including applicants with high GPAs.

"Telling students to try for another program does not help them or the nursing shortage, because the problem is prevalent across the entire state, at all of Maryland’s universities.”

“Our Hagerstown expansion not only admits more students to TU’s baccalaureate nursing program, but it allows us to provide educational resources in an underserved part of the state.”

The Nursing department anticipates admitting 24 students next fall, a 50 percent increase. Hagerstown offers all courses, labs and clinical offerings available at Towson, some from TU via the USM’s Interactive Video Network.

TU’s extension campus includes a director and several part-time faculty members who teach clinical sections. Two full-time faculty members graduated from Jordan’s innovative “grow your own” master's program. Started by Jordan in fall 2005, “grow your own” provides six baccalaureate-educated nurses with a $45,000 annual salary and a $5,000 materials stipend as they obtain their master’s degree within an 18-month period (By law, nursing staff with bachelor’s degrees are restricted to teaching clinical sections.) In return, participants serve eight hours a week as clinical preceptors and upon graduation teach a minimum of four terms for TU as clinical assistant professors. To date, the program has graduated five out of its six participants.

Jordan says she undertook her “grow our own” quest and the Hagerstown expansion with support and encouragement from President Robert L. Caret, who asked her in 2004 what TU could do to counter the state’s nursing shortage providing TU secured an appropriation from the Maryland General Assembly. “Dr. Caret really advocated for the $384,000 in funding that made these changes possible,” says Jordan. “He saw our responsiveness to regional work force needs as being integral to TU’s role as a metropolitan university.

“By anchoring additional faculty in Hagerstown, TU is expanding nursing education exponentially across the state and responding proactively to Maryland's nursing shortage."

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