BCC nursing program gets grant

The community college was one of 23 schools to receive an award from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Currently, about 22 percent of the 110 students in the nursing program at BCC are minorities. The school hopes to increase that to 35 percent in the next three years.

"A more culturally sensitive and ethnically diverse nursing work force is critical because the patient population is becoming much more diverse," said James Bennett, BCC's dean of instruction. "In large part, it falls to community colleges, who train 65 percent of the state's nursing candidates, to recruit, retain and graduate more ethnically diverse students to meet this need."

The grant money will be used for stipends to help disadvantaged students with living expenses, study-skills training, English-as-a-second-language programs, peer-to-peer tutoring and counseling.

"We have a number of students who come unprepared," said Maurice McKinnon, director of the Health Sciences Education and Wellness Institute. "We want to provide any services that will help them to be successful."

The grant money also will pay for training for nursing-program faculty so they better understand and appreciate diversity and improve their understanding of other cultural and socioeconomic values, styles and perspectives.

"Our faculty will be doing some exercises that help them learn similarities and differences in traditions," McKinnon said. "It is critical that people have an understanding of those they are caring for."

The grant will provide 87 percent of the total $557,000 cost of the three-year project, with the remainder paid for by BCC.

The two-year nursing program prepares students to become registered nurses with both classroom training and clinical experience.

Leslie Fulbright: 206-515-5637 or lfulbright@seattletimes.com