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Darton gets nursing grant

• A grant charges Darton College with increasing its nursing graduates by 27 percent within three years.

Barbara Rivera Holmes

ALBANY — In addressing one of the root causes for the national nursing shortage, the University System of Georgia has awarded $3 million in competitive grants for schools to increase their production of registered nurses, among them, Darton College.

The two-year Albany school was awarded $189,320 to expand enrollment, increase nursing faculty salary and add two part-time faculty members, states a USG news release issued recently.

“The Board of Nursing and National League for Nursing have a requirement that for every 20 students in the program we need one full-time faculty member,” said Joan Darden, vice president of academic affairs at Darton and a member of the state Nursing Education Task Force. “The only way we can increase enrollment is to hire more faculty.”

The task force asked the University System for $5 million in funding, Darden said, and received $3 million, which was doled out to 16 of the system’s 25 nursing schools.

“The USG Nursing Education Initiative’s primary goal is to increase by 50 percent the number of new registered nurses prepared in the University System by 2010,” stated Daniel Rahn, president of the Medical College of Georgia and the USG’s senior vice chancellor for health and medical programs.

“This translates to about 700 additional nurses in Georgia, bringing the total number of pre-license graduates produced by the University System to more than 2,400 annually.”

One of the main reasons for the shortage of nursing students is the shortage of faculty, Darden said. And the shortage of faculty, she added, is partly a money issue.

“The reason that people don’t go into the faculty role is primarily salary,” said Darden, who said that nursing faculty members must have a master’s degree. “In a faculty role, people are starting at about $40,000-$60,000.

“But a nurse practitioner makes $50,000-$80,000 with a master’s degree in nursing,” she said.

The grant funds, which Darden said the college received in August or September, are to:

• expand current enrollment in its Accelerated Registered Nursing (ARN) track for health care professionals from 24 to 30 students;
• provide salary increases for nursing faculty;
• and add two part-time faculty to support Darton’s partnership with East Georgia College.

The college’s overall goal, to be met by 2010, is to increase its ARN graduates by 27 percent, from the current 119 to 174.

The grant is a one-time award, Darden said, and it’s not yet known if the funds will be available next year.

Darden said the college admitted 168 nursing students into its program this fall.

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