"That's way above the national average," explains Jane Williams, Dean, "Our students are getting prime jobs because we took the time to grow and earned an impressive reputation."

Being a School of Nursing gives the RIC program "status we deserve," but, Williams notes, "we also put a lot of effort into academics tutoring and student retention. Nearly 75 percent of our students also have family and jobs. Yet 75 percent of our incoming freshmen graduate." That's an impressive number, given its demographics, but RIC is shooting for 80 percent or more.


Financial aid is key. Rhode Island College's School of Nursing has over 30 separate scholarships and awards offering money for students pursuing specific areas of care, such as long-term care, health care, or oncology. Other awards aim for specific groups: such as the National Association of Hispanic Nurses Scholarship and the Minority Nurse Scholarship.

Dean Williams makes the case for college-trained nurses succinctly: "Records show that the patient mortality rate is highest among hospitals that have a low percentage of nurses with advanced degrees," she notes.

According to Williams, certain specialties in nursing are particularly sought after by hospitals and other health care providers: pediatrics, gerontology, public health and acute care. Rhode Island College School of Nursing now has new Masters Degree programs in the last two. But it, too, fights the lack of trained faculty.

"Currently, we are fully staffed," Dean Williams notes, "but as that faculty retires, we will have a real problem."

Partnerships Building Crucial

RIC works with area hospitals to recruit, train and staff its faculty, including a new partnership with the local Veterans Memorial Hospital in Providence.

"We are working with the VA to hire a clinical nursing educator who will also train our students," Williams says, noting, "This is a relatively new development. In the past, hospitals, now removed from nursing training, had their own managed care issues to deal with."

"In the past, everyone devalued the education of nurses," Williams says. "Meanwhile, hospitals and other agencies stopped hiring clinical specialists and other masters-prepared nurses, saving money by hiring the worst-prepared nurses."

Moreover, women, who made up the majority of nurses through the 1970s, had other choices. "Women went into law, into business," Dean Williams adds. Now, both men and women are returning to nursing as a first or second career.

"We have an advisory board of doctors, lawyers and current nurses who are working with us to evaluate our future plans and to fund raise," Williams notes.

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