Friday, January 8, 2016

Grant helps foreign-born PTCC nursing students

In an effort to increase enrollment, retention and graduation rates among foreign born nursing students, Pine Technical & Community College has recently earned a grant to support these efforts.
 
“According to my research, diversity in the U.S. has grown to 24% of the population, but nationally, the nursing profession hasn’t kept pace,” said Connie Frisch, PTCC’s dean of nursing and health sciences. “Only 17% of nursing professionals reflect a diverse population. This grant will allow us to support our foreign-born students in order to grow diversity within the nursing profession statewide.”

PTCC was one of two rural Minnesota colleges to earn the grant awarded by Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU) Education Industry Partnerships. The intent of the grant was to support the success of foreign-born nursing students. PTCC will use the grant to provide cultural competence workshops for nursing faculty. The workshops will help faculty identify European American cultural influences in the nursing profession, as well as develop cultural competence in the classroom. Additionally, the grant will help identify students’ language ability skills and support systems and provide opportunities to offer formal diverse study groups to all nursing students.

“Because of our commitment to diversity and student success, we’re very proud to receive this grant. It will have a possible impact on all of our nursing faculty and students,” Frisch said. “Eventually, we hope to extend these workshops and practices to other programs. The grant will have a positive impact on our entire campus.”
 
The Education Industry Partnership grant honors the late Kathleen McCullough-Zander, a former nursing faculty at Minneapolis Community and Technical College. Her husband, David Zander, in memory of his wife, worked with legislators in 2015 to provide an appropriation of $35,000 to support programming for foreign-born students. The legislature specified Century College and Minneapolis Community and Technical College as recipients in the Metro area for the funding, with two additional grants awarded to rural colleges – Pine Technical & Community College and Hibbing Community College.

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