UHCL professor secures a THECB grant to address nursing shortage in Texas
The nursing shortage in the U.S. is a critical issue, projected to leave a gap of over 78,000 full-time registered nurses by 2025. Addressing this challenge head-on, Karen Alexander, the director of nursing and an associate professor at the University of Houston-Clear Lake (UHCL), has secured a $378,753 grant from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) Nursing Shortage Reduction Program. This funding is set to bolster UHCL’s efforts in recruiting and retaining bilingual students in UHCL’s Nursing program, increasing overall enrollment, and fostering innovative teaching methods to ensure a new generation of nursing educators and professionals.
Alexander attributes the nursing shortage, in part, to a lack of nurse educators and believes the grant will enhance degree marketing efforts, ultimately leading to more qualified nursing educators and healthcare professionals throughout the state.
“This grant will help us market people to our new MSN Nursing Education and Leadership degree,” she said, “so we will be putting out educators who can help alleviate many of the waitlists that students sometimes have to go through to get into a pre-license nursing program.”
Targeting bilingual students is one of the primary subgoals of the grant. UHCL is a Hispanic-Serving Institution, and 25% of Houston residents identify as Hispanic. Therefore, Alexander said reaching this population should be easy. She plans to draw other ethnicities to the program as well, not just Spanish-speaking groups. She said she wants to advertise on radio, movie theatres, social media, and streaming TV stations as well as magazines geared toward specific ethnic groups to help reach this goal.
“We have a large population of Asian nurses in the Houston area, and I think sometimes they get underrepresented in this profession, so we want to make that sure we include them,” she said. “We also have a large population of nurses who are from various parts of Africa. There is such a melting pot in Houston that we can tap into as well as other parts of the U. S.”
As a veteran, Alexander hopes to draw more veterans to UHCL’s nursing program as well, along with male students. Data USA calculates that men represent less than 13% of the workforce of registered nurses in Texas.
“Because we are a master’s program of nursing education, we are going to ensure that we give students all the resources they need to be prepared to sit for the certified nurse exam so they can be certified educators when they walk out the door.”
The grant funds are also slated to increase overall enrollment of nursing students. Alexander said she often encounters people who are not aware that UHCL offers nursing and healthcare degrees, so she emphasized the importance of advertising the highlights of this MSN Nursing Education and Leadership degree program which combines both. She mentioned UHCL’s unique Healthcare Administration MHA, program which provides courses for the MSN Nursing Education and Leadership degree that one would get in a MBA program and the accelerated and HyFlex (hybrid flexible) nature of the nursing programs as a couple of these highlights. In addition to recruiting new nursing students via marketing, she hopes current students will become ambassadors for the programs, thereby increasing enrollment by word of mouth.
In the area of instruction, Alexander expects the grant to help UHCL professors apply more innovative teaching methods in their classrooms. She said the faculty members always strive for innovation and stated that the HyFlex class format serves as an example. Giving students beneficial opportunities outside the classroom and providing exam-related resources are other ways of achieving this objective of innovation, she said.
“We are trying to give students the experience of being able to attend conferences, present, publish, and have their publications known before they even get out of school,” she said. “Also, because we are a master’s program of nursing education, we are going to ensure that we give students all the resources they need to be prepared to sit for the certified nurse exam so they can be certified educators when they walk out the door. That is very big.”
In accomplishing these goals, Alexander is confident that the THECB Nursing Shortage Reduction Program grant will position UHCL as a leader in addressing the statewide nursing shortage.
“We’re going to have those educators out here, and they’re going to be educating new and upcoming nurses,” she said. “The graduates of our RN to BSN program will be the best leaders that you can find at institutions out there, and they are going to be the next generation to move forward into not only our master’s program, but into shaping nursing and leaving a legacy.”
More information about UHCL’s nursing degrees can be found on the Nursing Program webpage.