Sugar Land nursing program to welcome first students in January
The University of St. Thomas opened its third Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing program site in Sugar Land — an expansion school leaders say can help efforts to alleviate Texas’s ongoing health care challenges.
“As Texas and the nation continue to experience a nursing shortage, we recognize the need to grow enrollment in our undergraduate nursing program in a way that provides accessibility for anyone in the Houston area interested in our program,” Claudine Dufrene, the university’s executive dean and associate professor, said in a statement.
The new site is set to welcome its first batch of 22 students in January, a university news release announced.
The program will be housed in a 21,819-squarefoot interactive learning environment at 14090 Southwest Freeway.
What is UST’s Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing program?
The Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing is UST’s rigorous, 12month program combining online instruction with hands-on learning at a simulation lab, clinical lab and testing room.
The full-time program is for students who have earned at least 60 nonnursing credits from an accredited institution or those holding a nonnursing bachelor’s degree.
Applicants must earn passing scores on the HESI or TEAS nursing entrance exams, and have a cumulative GPA of 3.0 or higher, including a 3.0 GPA for all prerequisite science courses.
UST began offering the ABSN program at the university’s main campus in downtown Houston and their site in Shenandoah around three years ago.
“It’s definitely intense, very fast-paced. You have to do time management,” said The Woodlands resident Kiersten Hall, who is finishing her third semester at the Shenandoah location.
Hall, 33, was a medical assistant. When her supervising doctor retired, she said she decided to go to nursing school, fulfilling a longtime goal.
Hall has been offered a job at HCA Houston Healthcare’s cardiology department.
Also in her third semester is Kayla Gonzales, 24, who joined the ABSN program after finishing her four-year bachelor’s degree from Texas A&M.
“I got into nursing because I always knew I wanted to do something in the medical field,” said Gonzales, who hails from New Caney. “When I was younger, my great grandmother had Parkinson’s and my grandmother was her caregiver.”
In her junior and senior years at Texas A&M, Gonzales began exploring nursing schools and later connected with someone who had completed UST’s ABSN program.
“I was like, ‘OK, I can dedicate one more year of school before I start a career,’” she said. “And so that’s how I found this. … I guess the cheesy answer is I just wanted to be a nurse because I love helping people, always have. Also, l love putting on latex gloves, they make me feel important.”
After finishing her course, Gonzalez will start working with trauma patients as a med-surg nurse.
Both Hall and Gonzalez said the field of nursing had become more competitive.
Ongoing reports of nursing shortages prompted many students to pursue nursing as a career; however, this increased interest has heightened the demand for positions in the field, Hall said.
Thousands rejected
In Texas alone, nursing schools reject more than 10,000 students annually, making admission highly competitive, Dufrene said. A key factor preventing the acceptance of more students is the shortage of faculty.
“It’s not just the nurses in the workforce that are aging, but also the faculty and administrators in nursing schools,” Dufrene said. “So there’s not just a focus on that getting new grads out in the nursing field, but it’s also how do we attract them once they’re in practice, to come into nursing education.” According to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, 91,938 students were turned away from nursing schools in 2021 due to a lack of faculty, classroom space and budget.
“Through our three locations, our goal is to reverse this trend by helping students find their calling and putting more nurses on the front lines of care faster,” Dufrene said.