Coconino Community College Nursing students take the Nightingale Pledge during a ceremony at the Lone Tree campus in Flagstaff on May 11, 2017. Courtesy photo.
FLAGSTAFF — The Coconino Community College Nursing program will be growing to add more students to each yearly class beginning this fall.
CCC will now be accepting 30 students each fall to fill out a class — up 50 percent from 20 students the year prior.
“We need nurses in the community, and there’s a shortage of nurses in the rural areas,” said CCC Provost Dudley Gardner, Ph.D. “It’s a positive step in the College’s evolution.”
Since taking over in 2015, Lori Edwards, CCC’s Director of Nursing and Allied Health, has increased the pass rates for Nursing students taking the state board of nursing licensure exams, called NCLEX. In 2016, the first-time pass rate was 84 percent, and in 2017, the pass rate was 88 percent.
“The fact that we are producing such good nurses at this time, it’s a good thing for the community,” Edwards said. “I’m looking forward to the challenge.”
To help with the increase in students, CCC President Dr. Colleen A. Smith, Ph.D., approved the hiring of a third nursing instructor, who will also begin work in the fall with the increased class size. The students for the fall class have already been selected from the applicant pool. Preference was given to students who have taken classes at CCC and are Coconino County residents.
The program takes two years to complete, and the students in the class remain together for the entire educational experience. The CCC Nursing program gives students the knowledge and the skills they need to enter a variety of jobs in the health care industry. The Nursing program at CCC began in 2003, and nearly 400 students have successfully completed the program and have gone onto nursing careers, many of who remained in Coconino County after graduation. Several CCC graduates have come back to serve as faculty for the Nursing and Allied Health program.
The increase to the Nursing program comes at a time when CCC is strengthening and reinvigorating class offerings at the Fourth Street Innovation Center. The CCC Nursing and Allied Health programs receive generous grant support from the Northern Arizona Healthcare Foundation and the Capstone Health Fund through the Arizona Community Foundation of Flagstaff. For more information about the CCC Nursing and Allied Health programs, visit https://www.coconino.edu/academic-programs/nursing-program
About Coconino Community College: Coconino Community College faculty and staff are dedicated to promoting an environment of excellence to support students. Since 1991, CCC has served residents across 18,000 square miles of Coconino County. The College has helped create the region’s skilled workforce, with the goal of improving the lives of our residents through workforce development and higher education. CCC has served more than 75,000 students countywide, with two campuses in Flagstaff and an instructional site in Page.
CCC provides affordable tuition and a variety of certificates and degrees including career/technical programs with more than 50 certificate programs and two-year associate degrees in various fields. Those fields include nursing, fire science, law enforcement and business. Additionally, CCC has programs that ease student transition to any of the three state universities.
CCC reaches out to the more rural portions of the County including Williams, the Grand Canyon/Tusayan, Page/Lake Powell, Fredonia, Tuba City and other remote areas on the Navajo, Hopi and Supai Tribal Lands. Instructional sites offer classes through online, in-person and Interactive Television classes to meet the needs of students in these rural and remote areas. Nearly 20 percent of CCC’s students are Native American learners.