Southeast Community College’s Practical Nursing program met requirements set forth by the National League for Nursing Accrediting Commission and was granted continuing accreditation.
The NLNAC made the decision while meeting June 29-30. The next evaluation visit for SCC’s program is scheduled for spring 2019.
Mary Trumble, chair of the program on the Lincoln Campus, said a lot of work went into the reaccreditation process.
“We completed our self-study writing in 2010,” she said. “The NLNAC came for a visit in February of this year. They didn’t get to see our operation on the Beatrice Campus because we were in the midst of a snowstorm.”
However, the team saw the Lincoln facilities and was able to meet with Crystal Higgins, chair of the program on the Beatrice Campus.
Trumble said a program conference room was turned into a reading room where the site team could read the curriculum, view samples of student work and review student handouts. Minutes from faculty meetings also were made available to the site visit team.
“They also visited our clinical sites,” Trumble said. “They talked to current students at the clinical sites, talked to the staff and toured the facilities.”
At SCC, Trumble said the team also observed the laboratory where instructors work with students. The team also met with the entire faculty and with all current students.
“It was a very thorough visit,” Trumble said. “They also met with student services personnel, financial aid and administrators.”
SCC’s Practical Nursing program, which awards a diploma after successfully completing 12 months of study, was established in Lincoln in November 1963 under the Manpower Development and Training Act of 1962. The Act was designed to train and retrain thousands of workers who were unemployed because of automation and technological change.
The program was one of the first PN programs in the country to become accredited, and it has received continuous accreditation since December 1969. Fairbury Junior College, which later relocated to Beatrice, began a program in 1971. In 1989, a part-time program was started in Geneva, and Falls City was added as a part-time site in 2002. The third and fourth part-time LPN programs were added in Lincoln and Beatrice in 2006. Students in the part-time program take two years to complete the diploma.
For more information on the Practical Nursing program, readers can visit the following link: Practical Nursing