USM signs nursing education partnerships with 3 schools

PINE BELT, Miss. (WDAM) - The University of Southern Mississippi signed nursing education partnerships with three other schools; Alcorn State University, Pearl River Community College and Jones College.

This memorandum of understanding is to help establish partnerships that will make obtaining a nursing degree easier for qualified students as well as help with the ongoing national nursing shortage.

“This is a really important moment for us, and I think it’s almost historical in the fact that these schools are working together in ways that they never worked together, and I don’t think other schools have done anything like this,” said Dr. Lachel Story, USM Professor and Dean of the College of Nursing and Health. “We are really sharing our resources to get our collective students further down the road in a way that makes sense for them and meets them where they are and so the goal here is to get these highly qualified students into nursing programs. We need more nurses, we need more faculty to teach them.”

This partnership will also provide qualified applicants to USM’s nursing bachelor’s degree program who would otherwise be delayed without an alternative admission pathway and provide an alternative academic pathway for students who have difficulty transitioning to nursing education.

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