The doors at Ancilla College will need to open wider this fall in order to allow room for the record number of nursing students that have applied. With over 300 applicants, growth is a good problem to have for a college that has recently faced some larger obstacles.
At the moment, there are currently only 50 slots for students in the Nursing/Health Sciences program. Because of this, the criteria for acceptance has been adjusted to be more critical. “We are looking at elements of the applicants’’ backgrounds, such as military experience, the amount of practical experience and other qualifications that were not taken into consideration for past applicants,” said Liz King, director of the program.
Last year, Ancilla graduated 17 nursing students, the highest it had been up to that point. “This Spring we will have 30+ students graduating and another 30 at the end of Fall semester,” said King. This number is not surprising if you take into consideration the shrinking number of educators and facilities in the state. “It has definitely brought more competition in to the field,” King added.
Ancilla College is happy to see the rising number of people interested in graduating from a program such as this. Not only because it increases the student population at the college, but also because it will create more practicing nurses in a discipline that is seeing steadily decreasing number. For more information on the program and the tracks available, please consult Ancilla.edu.
Ancilla College (www.ancilla.edu), part of The Center at Donaldson, offers 25 associate degrees, eight one-year certificates and has 20 athletic teams. Since 1937, the college has been a sponsored ministry of the Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ. It is a small, private, liberal arts school located two miles south of U.S. 30 on Union Road near Plymouth, Indiana.
