NCCU improves on nursing exam

Still short of goal, so fewer will be admitted

DURHAM -- Though N.C. Central University's nursing graduates showed a marked improvement on the state licensure exam in 2006, they still fell just short of a UNC system requirement that 85 percent must pass.

As a result, NCCU must admit 15 percent fewer students to its nursing program this fall, a blow to a program charged by the UNC system with doubling its number of graduates by 2010.

The percentage of its graduates who passed the state exam jumped from 65 percent in 2005 to 82 percent last year, higher than the state Board of Nursing's 75 percent requirement. NCCU and university system officials see that as a program on the rise.

"We're not disheartened," said Beverly Washington Jones, NCCU's provost. "We realize what we're doing is working, and we just need a little more time on task."

The program's enrollment was docked 15 percent -- or about 18 students -- under a recent guideline punishing UNC system campuses whose nursing graduates don't hit the system's 85 percent passage standard two years in a row. NCCU's rate has been below the standard for the past five years.

"If you reduce the number of students, maybe you can pay attention to them and get things to improve," said Alan Mabe, the UNC system's vice president for academic planning and university-school programs.

Though the punishment was handed down by the UNC system's Board of Governors, a committee of that board found that NCCU's program appears to be blossoming under new leadership.

Lorna Harris, who took over as chairwoman of the nursing department in July 2005, said Wednesday that a recent infusion of funds has brought much-needed resources. Laboratories have been added, and the faculty has swelled from 18 to 28 members in two years, she said.

NCCU officials hope the program -- now solely an undergraduate venture with about 90 juniors and seniors -- will eventually become a full-fledged professional school. All UNC system nursing schools and programs, responding to a statewide shortage of nurses, have been charged with doubling their number of graduates by 2010. That would bring the average graduating class at NCCU to about 80, no easy task without more state funding, Harris warned.

"Nursing isn't one of those majors where you can have 150 students in a class and meet their needs for learning," she said.

There is planning money in the UNC system's 2007-09 budget request for a new nursing building. No location has been chosen yet; the program is housed in the Miller-Morgan Building.

"Nursing needs a building of its own to take care of the clinical experience," Jones said. "It's more than a classroom building."

NCCU's nursing program was one of two to be punished for low exam passage rates. N.C. A&T State University's rate remained at 69 percent last year, a sign of serious problems that UNC President Erskine Bowles characterized last week as "no small deal."

Although the UNC system's board approved the enrollment reductions, not all of its members agreed it was the right way to go. Board member Gladys Robinson said she worried that cutting enrollment could weaken the programs further.

"My concern is reducing the percentage of students doesn't get at the problem," she said.