Northern's nursing program excels on a national level

The nursing program at Montana State University-Northern is attracting some major attention.

Northern's nursing pass rate for 2020 is 90.91 percent. The rate is above the national pass rate of 87.53 percent and one of the highest for Northern in the past seven years, and the program's students have attracted the attention of the renowned Mayo Clinic.

Nursing students go through rigorous state approved curriculum and spend hundreds of hours observing and participating in nursing activities.

Northern's nursing program is difficult to get accepted into.

Northern Director of University Relations Jim Potter said a waiting list usually exists of people trying to get into the program, and said the faculty and staff are a part of the program's success.

"I think the success we're seeing is the result of a lot of hard work, on the part of our faculty, and staff, and the commitment to make sure every student succeeds and understands the material," Potter said. "So they also have a mastery in their field. Not that they haven't before, but I think they have done an outstanding job in the past few years."

Nursing Program Interim Dean of College Health Jaime Duke said a state-wide curriculum exists that Associate of Science in Nursing and Registered Nurse programs follow throughout the state of Montana.

Northern offers the associate degree nursing program and a pre-licensure program. Northern also has the RN to Bachelor of Science in Nursing program, which requires the entrant to be a licensed RN.

The criteria to enroll in the nursing program at Northern is a simplified process despite the high demand.

"We look at extracted G.P.A., and how many classes that have been taken and acceptance criteria, everything is listed," Duke said. "The student must have an accumulative G.P.A. of 2.5, and an extracted G.P.A. of pre-requisite courses of 2.85 to be admitted."

The nursing program's success has attracted the attention of the Mayo Clinic, one of the most respected in the country, which recently recruited a student.

"That was the first time they reached out to us to recruit," Duke said. "They sent me an e-mail and they set up a time to meet up with our nursing students."

Duke said the Mayo Clinic is the number one hospital in the world and that's a big deal that they are recruiting our students.

"We've actually have had a past graduate that actually got hired by Mayo out of our ASN Program," Duke said.

Duke said she hopes students will want to go. It's up to the student to give them the option of what do they want and where they want to go and we're not just limiting them to rural health care.

Under its COVID-19 re-opening plan, Northern, including the nursing program, will go online after Thanksgiving.

"We're hoping to be back in clinical, we do have some clinical sites that are allowing our students to go, but we're waiting to see how COVID is in the area before they make a decision to let our students go back," Duke said. "We do have a fully functioning simulation lab and a skills lab, and if we have to we'll do it virtually."