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Cossatot Community College |
Consortium Receives Final Nursing Board OK
17 November 2004
DE QUEEN – At a meeting of the Arkansas State Board of Nursing held in Little Rock yesterday, the Arkansas Rural Nursing Education Consortium (ARNEC) was granted approval to begin recruiting Licensed Practical Nurses and Licensed Psychiatric Technician Nurses (LPNs/LPTNs) for its Registered Nurse training program. The consortium of six Arkansas community and technical colleges is one of the first of its kind in the country, utilizing interactive television and the Internet to instruct students in scattered locations across the state.
The six colleges involved in the consortium are: Arkansas State University-Newport; Black River Technical College-Pocahontas; Cossatot Community College of the University of Arkansas-De Queen; Ozarka College-Melbourne; South Arkansas Community College-El Dorado; and the University of Arkansas Community College at Morrilton. These six colleges serve twenty-seven counties in north-central, northeast, south-central and southwest Arkansas.
The pilot program will help address the critical shortage of nurses in the service areas, and will also provide a career path for Licensed Practical Nurses and Licensed Psychiatric Technician Nurses (LPN/LPTN) who aspire to become Registered Nurses.
Jill Hasley, MNSc., APRN, is the ARNEC Program Director. Hasley, whose office is at Cossatot Community College of the University of Arkansas in De Queen, says “We are obviously very excited about getting the official go-ahead for the program. We have some marketing materials that will be going out to prospective students in most of the schools’ service areas as early as tomorrow, because we are up against an application deadline of December 1st for our first class.” Application packets can be picked up at the ARNEC member institutions. Hasley noted that the first class of sixty students, ten at each of the six colleges, will begin January 11, 2005 and will graduate in December, 2005.
Hasley added, “This program was set up to address the needs of working LPNs/LPTNs. Theory instruction will be on Tuesday and Thursday evenings from 4-8 PM and clinical time will be on the weekends. I have fielded numerous calls from students who are able to attend this program because they can continue to work while they complete their education. We have also set up our general education requirements to encourage our students to continue their education and complete their BSN degrees.”
For more information on ARNEC, contact Kim Dickerson at CCCUA, 800-844-4471 Ext. 147, or Jill Hasley at 800-844-4471 or 870-584-4471, ext 159.
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