The accelerated master’s degree in nursing program at the Georgia Health Sciences University, formerly the Medical College of Georgia, has seen its minority student enrollment grow from just a smattering when it launched in 2006 to 16 percent last fall.
“In the very first class, I think we had one male, two African-American females …,” recalls Annette Bourgault, director of the Clinical Nursing Leader program.
Incremental increases in minority student enrollment — GHSU’s nursing program currently enrolls 18 minority students, compared with eight in 2008 — are due, in part, to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s New Careers in Nursing (NCIN) program. The Foundation awarded the school $260,000 over the past three years to administer scholarship money to second-degree students. GHSU also has boosted its male nursing student enrollment to 17 last fall, from four in 2008.
The Foundation, in partnership with the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), launched the scholarship to improve diversity in the field and to address the national nursing shortage. The only program to focus solely on underrepresented students — racial and ethnic minorities, men and the economically disadvantaged — in accelerated bachelor’s or master’s programs, NCIN awards funding to schools, which in turn have to demonstrate a commitment to diversity.
Programs that tie foundation funding to a diversity goal are not unusual, but Bourgault says NCIN provided the “extra push” the College of Nursing needed to improve its diverse student recruitment efforts.
“Since being involved with NCIN, our recruitment efforts have become more targeted to racial/ethnic minorities and males. This program also has increased our awareness of the minority representation in our program and has encouraged us to look at strategies for recruitment and retention of these underrepresented applicants and students,” says Bourgault. The school now heavily recruits from historically Black Spelman and Paine Colleges, in Atlanta and Augusta, Ga., respectively.
Since 2008, the Foundation has awarded $19 million in NCIN funding to 101 nursing programs, including California State University-Fullerton, Johns Hopkins University and the University of Michigan. The schools apply for between five and 30 scholarships a year, which translates into a $10,000 award for each selected underrepresented student. To date, NCIN schools have awarded 1,635 scholarships. Some 721 awardees have graduated and are practicing nurses.
