New Agreement For Advanced Nursing Degrees
GRAND RAPIDS -- The provosts and nursing administrators from Grand Valley State University, Hope College and Calvin College have signed agreements to streamline placements for nursing students from the two colleges within Grand Valley's advanced degree nursing programs.
It's a distinctive agreement between public and private higher education institutions, said Cynthia McCurren, dean of the Kirkhof College of Nursing at Grand Valley.
"We're excited to offer this opportunity to qualified and motivated nursing students from Calvin and Hope colleges," McCurren said. "This innovative partnership will be a collaboration with Hope and Calvin nursing faculty, promoting intentional mentoring of students to pursue advanced nursing education. The ultimate goal is to increase the number of advanced degreed nurses in Michigan."
KCON offers a Doctor of Nursing Practice program and a Master of Science Nursing-Clinical Nurse Leader program. The new agreement is effective for the 2012-2013 academic year. KCON will reserve two seats per year in the BSN to DNP program and two seats in the MSN-CNL program for qualified Calvin nursing graduates; and the same for qualified Hope nursing graduates. McCurren said regardless of how many applicants there are, these are guaranteed seats for eligible applicants from Hope and Calvin.
Gayle R. Davis, provost and vice president for academic affairs at Grand Valley, said she hopes this partnership serves as a model for development of similar agreements between private and public institutions.
"I am happy to endorse this agreement, exemplifying a spirit of inter-institutional collaboration and support, which benefits the Grand Valley programs as well as students from our two excellent partner institutions," Davis said.
The agreement utilizes a seminar course at Hope and Calvin that brings focus on nursing graduate school options. McCurren said these courses will encourage and prepare a cohort of students from each institution to apply for the KCON programs.
