Something amazing can be seen at the McDonald County campus of Crowder College, according to campus director Aaron Divine.
As someone involved in the purchase of the equipment featured in the campus' nursing program lab, he said it sets the program apart from others by having such complex, expensive and intricate training simulators available to students in one location.
The Crowder College McDonald County campus provides adult education and literacy courses for free, with separate enrollment from Crowder. The AEL also administers the high school equivalency exam to Missouri residents.
Free classes are offered to prepare for this exam and as preparation for students who did not score high enough on the COMPASS exam to be placed in college-credit-level courses. The COMPASS test can then be taken again, also free of charge.
AEL instructors are primarily retired public school teachers, said instructor Marian Crowley, who has 30 years in-class experience prior to her 8 years experience with Crowder.
Classes are available from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday, and night classes will begin Sept. 2 from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. Monday and Thursday.
The college is located at 194 College Road in Jane, Mo.
A birthing simulator lets nursing students watch a baby being born, as close to real life as it can get. They can even add blood, but that gets really messy, nursing coordinator Judy Lewellan said. Being able to see a baby born in real life is hard, and requires a lot of waiting, she added.
The expectant-mother mannequin can speak Spanish, to simulate a language barrier, and can get an IV with the push of actual fluids.
A simulated 5-year-old can be programmed to start seizing, or turn blue as if his airway is blocked.
They can emit breath sounds, have tubes put in the trachea and nose and simulate hemorrhaging.
The two-year nursing program is the only fully-contained complete degree program at the campus, for now, Divine said.
Crowder College opened its McDonald County satellite campus just north of the Arkansas-Missouri state line in January, after what Divine called an "outpouring of support" from county residents. The building itself is largely funded by donations and funds raised within the community.
This sets the campus apart, because the demand for this center for education came straight from the residents of the second-to-last rated county in all of Missouri, Lewellan said.
The nursing lab and the state-of-the-art simulators, however, were funded by a grant called MoHealthWINs through the Missouri Department of Labor.
The first nursing class at the campus will graduate in May 2015, and graduates will hold an Associates Degree in Nursing. By Missouri statute, each class can have up to 25 students.
When students are finished with the program, Divine said because of the technology offered at the campus, the students will be more prepared for real-life work and that will give them "a leg up and better opportunity for employment."
Over half of the first class to graduate in May 2015 lives in Arkansas, Lewellan said. The school offers in-state tuition to Arkansas residents. Lewellan said it's tough to get into the nursing program at NorthWest Arkansas Community College, and with this campus students can apply to both programs locally to better their chances for success.
The Missouri college currently contracts with Freeman Hospital and Mercy Health in Joplin and Neosho, but also has an agreement with Mercy Health in Rogers.
"They hire our nurses," she said, of the Arkansas-based health systems.
Six members of the last nursing program graduating class from Crowder College got jobs in Arkansas, she said. This class operated for a year and a half out of a small space in Pineville before the campus was built, she said.
Lewellan received her ADN in 1976 and then her bachelor's in nursing in Joplin in 1990. Six years later she earned her master's degree and worked as a family nurse practitioner until becoming coordinator of the Crowder program two years ago.
The nursing program at the satellite campus begins each fall semester, and accepts applications for admission from October through February each year.
For information, visit the school's website, www.crowder.edu.
Though the ADN is the only degree currently offered, Divine said the brand new campus provides a "cross section of basic education classes," including math, English and life and physical sciences.
"It's enough basic education so students can get a really good start," he said.
General News on 07/30/2014