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GRAMBLING, La. (AP) — Grambling State University officials say the school's defunct undergraduate nursing program will have to be rebuilt from scratch — if it gets approval to do so.
If the University of Louisiana System board of supervisors resolves the program's situation before July, the new nursing program could be planned during the 2016-17 academic year, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Janet Guyden told The News-Star (http://tnsne.ws/224qwbB). The 2017-18 academic would be the soonest that students could be enrolled, Guyden said.
The planning, she said, will have to examine the underlying philosophy of health care and define what knowledge and skills will be required. The process also will offer an opportunity for the university to engage discussion with stakeholders, alumni and employers to put together the program.
"The blueprint and the architecture of that process is very detailed and very complex, and it has to be very well articulated and planned such that its success is pretty much right on," Guyden said. "It's not for the faint of heart."
In August, the board approved a state of exigency for the program through the summer of 2016, which means that no students are being enrolled and no plans are actively being developed. The move also allowed to school to fire faculty no longer required.
Two months prior, the Louisiana State Board of Nursing had withdrawn conditional approval of Grambling's undergraduate nursing degree. The program struggled to maintain exam pass rates since 2010.
"(It) makes people (across the university) realize in very real ways that you can't take any program for granted," Guyden said. "You can't just assume because we had it great and we did it right here that it's going to stay right."
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