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Twenty students made history this semester at Union College by showing
up to class. They are the first students admitted in the nursing
program’s new second admission cycle. Previously the program accepted
just one class annually, but interest in the program has surged in
recent years. With so many qualified applicants, it became impossible to
accept everyone.

“Given our nursing program’s higher-than-average completion rate and
general reputation, as well as the college’s tradition of service, we
have more applicants than we can serve with just one admission per
year,” said Malcolm Russell, vice president for Academic Administration.

Union College’s nursing program will now accept two classes of 24
students each year instead of one class of 30. Eventually the program
will educate 144 undergraduates at a time, up from 90 last year. That’s
more than a 60-percent increase in enrollment.

With a shorter wait between admission cycles, impatient applicants may
not turn to other school’s programs. “I love it here at Union,” said
Jason Odenthal, who was recently accepted into the program. “Expanding
the program made it possible for me to stay.”

As the program’s popularity has soared, so have class sizes. “Over the
last several years we have admitted classes of 28, 30, and even 36,”
said Jeff Joiner, chair of the Health Sciences division. “This year's
graduating class will have over 36 students.” For a program setup to
handle 24 students per admission cycle, the larger classes were
beginning to put a strain on classroom space as well as the teaching
faculty.

To support this new growth, the nursing program has grown and adapted.
Vicki Smith and Amy Bollinger joined the teaching faculty this year,
while other instructors have started teaching larger classes. The
program will be adding more professors, and eventually all nursing
classes will be taught twice a year

With so many new students, the program’s demand for space has grown. The
physician assistant program, which shares classroom space with the
nursing program, also recently added a second class. “Between three
levels of nursing students and two levels of physician assistant
students plus several newly added international rescue and relief
classes taught in the Division of Health Science, we’ve become very
proficient at juggling classrooms from period to period,” Joiner said.
“We know the college has made addressing our classroom space a priority,
and until plans can be implemented we’ll keep juggling.”

For more information on Union College’s Nursing Program, visit
www.ucollege.edu/nursing, or call (402) 486-2524. The application
deadline for the August class is in March, while the January class
deadline is in October. Students admitted to the program must have
already been accepted by Union College and completed 32 semester hours
of prerequisite courses with a cumulative grade point average of at
least 2.75.

LINCOLN— Elizabeth Rodacker-Borgens, Union College associate professor
of English as a Second Language, and three librarians from the
University of Nebraska–Lincoln—Jolie Ogg Graybill, Charlene Maxey-Harris
and Charity Martin—have received a 2006 Diversity Research Grant Award.

The grant provides $2,500 to study differences in research techniques
between native English speakers and English language learners. Half of
the 74 students will be observed at each college. Of those tested,
one-third will be native English speakers.

“The American Library Association called twice to congratulate us and
say it was a great idea,” Rodacker-Borgens says. One reason is because
of the effect international students have on the United States economy.
According to a 2005 Open Doors economic survey, international students
contribute $13.5 billion to the U.S. every year, and U.S. higher
education is ranked as one of the five largest service sector exports by
the U.S. Department of Commerce. However Rodacker-Borgens says there
hasn’t been much research into the difference of perceptions and
learning styles of this audience for at least 10 years. “Most mainstream
institutions aren’t doing anything about internationals,”
Rodacker-Borgens says. “We really need to be tailoring our services to
reach them more.”

Martin and Rodacker-Borgens began exploring the idea for an
international student comparison research project last spring. By April,
they had applied for the grant and in June their proposal was accepted.
“I have a drive for scholarship,” Rodacker-Borgens says. “I’m kind of a
fireball in that respect.”

The information gathered from the project will be presented at the
Charting Courses program at the American Library Association’s 2007
Annual Conference.