Luzerne County Community College President Patricia Donohue posed for more than a minute Tuesday as she accepted a $50,000 novelty check. It’s the first of three such checks the school will get annually to help LCCC hire more nursing school teachers and to help alleviate a state shortage of nurses.

“You nurses think you have to stand still during some procedures, you should try this,” Donohue quipped as she smiled for the cameras, taking the check from Mike Hershock, president of the Pennsylvania Health Education Foundation.

An anonymous donor gave the money, funneled through the foundation, which, according to a press release is “a non-government, nonprofit organization working to create and expand affordable options for postsecondary education for students, families and schools.”

It may be non-government, but retiring state Sen. Charles Lemmond, R-Dallas, showed up to praise the foundation and the college. Lemmond, a member of the foundation’s board, noted that the state has been successful in attracting more students into the field of nursing, “because they can afford it now. But we discovered a lack of faculty.”

Thus, the 3-year-old foundation, which has already given $524,262 to LCCC in other grant programs for student aid, launched the “Nurse Faculty Lines Program.” Hershock said 55 schools statewide applied for 11 grants. He added that one of the 11 winners is another school in the region, but that arrangements with the donor for that grant have not been finalized so the school isn’t ready to make an announcement.

Each school gets $50,000 a year for three years, and must use it to increase nursing enrollment. Donohue said LCCC will hire a full-time faculty member, allowing the school to take on 30 more nursing students. She pointed out that the college is the largest producer of nurses in the county, with more than 500 students in the program.

Hershock also noted that the school has been rapidly increasing the percentage of its students who pass the National Council Licensure Examination, with a current pass rate of 95 percent. The state average, Hershock said, is about 88 percent.

Hershock conceded that the nursing shortage is apt to be around a long time, citing state Department of Labor statistics that predict a shortage of 16,000 registered nurses and 4,000 licensed practical nurses by 2010. Still, he insisted, the state and the foundation are making big gains, stemming a shortage that had grown so acute it forced some hospitals to close.

“I think we’ve made a real difference.”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 29th, 2006 at 9:38 pm and is filed under College Grant, Education. Tags: College, Education, Grant, Student. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.