NPC gets approval to pursue four-year degrees

National Park College’s Board of Trustees on Wednesday approved a resolution to move forward with submitting a Letter of Intent to the Arkansas Division of Higher Education to offer four-year bachelor’s degrees.

The college plans to start by offering a Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree, “due to the critical need for the local health care industry and because students have repeatedly expressed the need for the degree,” a news release said.

“We’re excited obviously by the opportunity. There’s a long way to go. We’re just at the beginning of the process, but we certainly are excited to make the proposal,” Wade Derden, NPC’s vice president for academic affairs, said.

“The proposal itself that’s coming before the board is a little generic because we have to ask the state and our creditors to change the scope of the college to allow for bachelor’s degrees. But the only one that we are focusing on right now is a Bachelor of Science in Nursing, which would be a post-licensure degree because we already offer an associate degree and students get their nursing license upon receiving that degree. So it would basically be another 30 to 33 credit hours to receive that bachelor’s degree,” he said.

Getting the four-year degree in nursing for NPC is a long process. The college is required to submit a Letter of Intent to the Arkansas Department for Higher Education. The Letter of Intent requires the college’s board of trustees’ approval, which they did on Wednesday, Derden said.

“Along with that is a role and scope proposal, which outlines sort of an overview of what our plans are, and our financial situation and our staffing situation, sort of an analysis of our resources. And then there is the degree proposal itself, which is the third step; we’ll submit all of that at the same time. I think the deadline is Nov. 1 for us to submit that to the state for their consideration,” he said.

The degree proposal will outline what courses will be

needed and the syllabi and other things required for the BSN completion degree.

“And that just starts the process at that point; it’s in the hands of the state. There are several other items that we have to submit, a workforce analysis; we’ll have to get letters of support from the community and do some surveys of students. So there’s several steps there. And then we have to do basically the same process with our accrediting agency at the Higher Learning Commission,” Derden said.

NPC surveys its graduates every year, and the nursing students in particular always focus on the desire to have a BSN offered at the campus, which 90% of the nursing graduates go on to get a BSN.

“They do a lot of that through other colleges and universities, but also things like Walden University and online programs. The idea of our faculty who they know, and like working with, being able to continue their education with that group, I think is attractive to them. And so we’ve heard that for many years, and the time just seems right, the demand is there,” Derden said.

“Obviously, with a pandemic underway, nurses are in high demand. This past legislative session, there was a lot of discussion about expanding the pipeline for nurses, and so this is just our way of answering that demand and that community need, as well as students’ desire,” he said.

“There is a significant nursing shortage across the country and certainly across Arkansas. There were significant shortages even before the COVID pandemic. If you look nationally in the next three to five years, there is going to be a need for over two million nurses,” Dr. Douglas Ross, president of CHI St. Vincent Hot Springs, said in the news release.

“Our local health care providers and the larger community have expressed the need for qualified nurses in Garland County, and NPC is prepared to answer that call,” NPC President John Hogan said in the release.

“NPC is, first and always, a community college. I am dedicated to that mission, the governance of NPC, its role in workforce and community development, and my belief that our work is extremely important to the future of this community. (Wednesday’s) approval initiating the process for NPC to offer a BSN is an extension of that community college mission,” he said in the release.