Ferris will be partnering with Grand Rapids Community College, Davenport and Grand Valley State University to create a new nursing program starting in the fall of 2025.
This program will offer the opportunity to return for classes required to earn a bachelor’s degree. For nurses to qualify for this program, they would need a Registered Nursing license and an associate degree in nursing.
Nursing Program Coordinator and associate professor Becky Johnson-Himes described how the partnership will help students keep their options open.
“We have a lot of students that transfer back and forth, and they didn’t want to just choose one of us, which is nice,” Johnson-Himes said. “So it’s a partnership of the four campuses, which makes it a bit interesting because we all need to collaborate on courses that will transfer equally between all of us.”
Johnson-Himes explained how the nursing program at Ferris has had articulation agreements and concurrent agreements, meaning mutual program classes that have been aligned with GRCC for many years. The program is partially on-campus and partially hybrid. It will rotate between the schools per semester: Ferris will host the program in fall 2025, GVSU will host it in spring 2026, Davenport will host the summer semester and so on.
Instructors for the class will also talk to the students, giving them a closer look at Ferris, Davenport or GVSU. Depending on their choice, they can transfer their associates over to their school of choice for their bachelor’s and get full credit. The idea for the program is to help bring more nurses into the workforce and help students with associate degrees in nursing work towards earning their bachelor’s.
“With the bachelor’s degree, there’s a significant amount of theory and evidence-based practice and holistic approaches to care that aren’t always incorporated in two-year degrees,” Johnson-Himes said. “Not that it’s less nursing skills are all nothing like that, and so organizations, hospitals prefer and want people to go back and get those extra pieces of learning, and that’s what this is stemming from.”
Johnson-Himes stated that the majority of organizations within the state and the country require a bachelor’s degree within five years of being hired. However, during the COVID-19 era, those rules were more relaxed to fit associate degrees because of the need for nurses at the time, now with that era behind, the requirement for a bachelor’s came back into play.
Ferris has a Bachelor of Science and Nursing program, however, there is not an associate’s degree in nursing.
Nursing senior Isabelle Reynolds shared her thoughts on the new program’s goal.
“Programs that allow individuals with associates degrees to further their education are a great resource. Personally, I am very happy and fortunate that I was able to go straight to obtaining a bachelor’s first, but I know many do not have that capability,” Reynolds said. “The nursing career has evolved extensively, and jobs prefer to hire nurses with a bachelor’s degree, so allowing people to reach this goal is a great resource to have.”
Reynolds also explained that because of the knowledge they are expected to retain, Ferris has students take on 12-hour clinical rotations. She was grateful for the experience because she believed it prepared her for what an inpatient hospital nursing job would consist of.
The need for nurses has increased, and programs like this will help expand outreach to students and further their education. Assisting students and encouraging them to explore the nursing field will help hospitals decrease the workload and increase care and safety among patients.
Nursing senior and President of the Ferris Student Nurses’ Association Bella Balistreri expressed her opinion on the new program.
“I think a program like that is fantastic. Obtaining a bachelor’s degree in this field is almost a requirement at this point,” Balistreri said. “We practice real-life scenarios in a safe classroom environment so when we eventually do encounter the scenario in the clinical setting, we feel prepared.”
The program will be available in the fall 2025 semester for all nursing students.