HCC nursing program to enroll new students

After 80 percent pass licensure exam, status is upgraded

Houston Community College’s nursing program will enroll new students starting next semester now that the Texas Board of Nursing voted to reinstate full approval to the program late last week.

The decision follows news that 80 percent of recent nursing graduates passed the National Council Licensure Examination, a testing benchmark that HCC students had struggled to reach since 2013.

In January, the Texas Board of Nursing downgraded HCC’s associate degree nursing program to “conditional” approval status, citing in part three years of exam pass rates below 80 percent. That decision blocked HCC from enrolling new students this past fall.

In addition to the low pass rate, regulators visited the campus last December and found that students wanted more equipment and longer time in the lab to practice their skills. A subsequent report called on HCC’s Coleman College, which houses the nursing program, to upgrade equipment and offer more resources for faculty.

Coleman College President Phillip Nicotera said those problems have been solved. The school also doubled the length of the program to 16 weeks, reversing a decision from former administrators, and raised admissions standards.

Nicotera, who started as presi-

dent in May 2015, said the school now also takes a more proactive approach to learning by helping nursing students work through challenging material with tutors, who ensure that they have a “complete grasp” of course topics. Additional resources in this area were added early this year, he said.

“Obviously, nobody wants to be put in probationary standard, (but) it gives you the call to step back and take a look at our program,” he said. “If we continue to do what we’re doing, we expect that to have a greater impact on students.”

Students have shown interest in HCC’s health sciences programming even as the college’s general enrollment has declined in the last five years, a trend Nicotera attributes to potential for job prospects. HCC is bolstering Coleman College by adding more than 250,000 square feet of instruction space across the street from its existing building. The college is using $98 million of bond money for this development, and it expects the new facilities to be completed by fall 2017.

After receiving the nursing board’s letter on Monday afternoon, Nicotera said, the college is shifting its focus to recruiting roughly 65 new students for next semester, which begins Jan. 9. The college has received 52 applications, a slight year-overyear decline.

Nicotera said he looks forward to enrolling a full class.

“We were less 70 students — you feel that a little bit, but campus was still as vibrant as it was before,” Nicotera said.

Earlier this month, the Texas Board of Nursing found that in preliminary results, 80.4 percent of HCC nursing students passed the exam. Regulators then validated those results test by test before deciding to place HCC’s approval status on its quarterly agenda for its Oct. 27-28 board meeting. The board confirmed Monday morning that it voted to reinstate approval and issued a letter to HCC.

Hitting the 80 percent pass rate follows allegations that HCC purposefully withheld graduation documents that were required to take the test in an effort to manufacture better results. College trustee David Wilson’s attorney filed suit on behalf of affected students.

Later in the summer, the college said it would distribute the forms, attributing the delay to a processing error in confirming program completion requirements.

lindsay.ellis@chron.com twitter.com/lindsayaellis