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Schools, health providers soar past barriers to nursing program

JANESVILLE — Imagine: Mercy Health System, Dean/St. Mary’s and Beloit Memorial Hospital all working together.

Then add two other sometimes-rivals to the mix: Blackhawk Technical College and UW-Rock County.

No need to imagine. All four of those entities have been working for two years to create a program that allows students to stay at home in Rock County while getting a bachelor’s degree in nursing.

BTC, UW-Rock County and UW-Oshkosh officials signed the documents to make it official Thursday. Representatives of the health-care providers were on hand, beaming at their educational colleagues, smiling and complimenting each other.

Officials also announced the program’s name, Soar Ahead.

Putting together collaborations like this one can be difficult, said Rosemary Smith, Dean of the UW-O nursing program, which has two similar collaborative programs in other parts of the state.

The success in Rock County is a tribute to the willingness of the community to overcome bureaucratic hurdles, Smith said.

But why must it be so difficult?

“Turf wars,” said UW-Rock Dean Diane Pillard.

“I can’t speak highly enough about the people who were involved in this project,” Pillard said. “There were none of the turf issues, none of that.”

BTC President Eric Larson said the shift from skills-oriented nursing programs to more academically oriented programs began 50 years ago.

But two-year and four-year colleges resisted working together to allow two-year nursing grads to continue their educations, Larson said.

With Soar Ahead, that divide has been bridged. “Now we know we can. There’s no question about it,” Larson said.

“We worked together very well knowing that the Rock County community really needed this, and the health-care community really needed this,” Pillard said.

Mercy Vice President Rich Gruber pointed out why the need is so great: The struggling local economy.

Gruber said Soar Ahead represents a vote of confidence by health-care providers in the local educational system, from preschool through college.

Unspoken at the signing ceremony was the fact that nurses—especially bachelor’s degree nurses—make family-supporting wages of the kind that were lost with the closing of the General Motors plant in Janesville.

The job openings are expected to be there. More than 350 local nurses will be eligible for retirement in the next eight to 10 years, Pillard.

“Add that to the fact that St. Mary’s is building a new hospital (in Janesville) that will also bring additional jobs,” Pillard said.

Students already are in the pipeline. Four students have completed their general-education credits at UW-Rock and will attend BTC this fall.

Two of them, Katy Phetteplace and Kavita Deckard, both of Janesville, said they’re convinced a bachelor’s degree in nursing will jump-start their careers.

“You don’t have the opportunity to move up or go anywhere else without that bachelor’s,” Deckard said.

After BTC, the students return to UW-Rock, where they’ll complete their bachelor’s degrees with UW-Oshkosh instructors.

Local nurses with associate degrees also can plug into the Soar Ahead program to improve their skills and earning power, officials said.

Funding is falling into place, too. Mercy pledged $30,000 a year plus $10,000 a year in in-kind donations for the next three years, Pillard announced.

That infusion put the project over its three-year, $240,000 startup-funding goal.

Dean/St. Mary’s, Monroe Hospital, Beloit Memorial Hospital, Cedar Crest and Huntington Place also contributed.