The Council on Academic Affairs approved 21 nursing program related items and the proposal to take a student’s weighted GPA into account during the admission process during its Thursday meeting.

Changing the GPA requirements for newly admitted students allows them to have a better opportunity at finding scholarships, rewarding students taking honors, AP, and dual enrollment classes in high school.

At the Aug. 20 Faculty Senate meeting, Provost Jay Gatrell announced a possible new four-year nursing program.

Currently, Eastern offers an RN to BSN nursing program, allowing students who are already registered nurses to earn their Bachelor of Science.

With the new program, students can declare their major as pre-nursing, allowing themselves a year of prerequisite and general education courses on campus before being able to apply as a full-time nursing student at the end of their freshman year.

According to the nursing program proposal and appendices, the program will require 124 semester hours.

Nursing professor Holly Farley presented the nursing program proposal and course descriptions along with an outlined syllabus for each individual class.

The nursing program will offer a variety of different ways for students to learn and get hands on experience while at Eastern like hybrid in-class/online courses, simulators, and hands on clinicals at local hospitals and other health care places.

The first course proposed, Pathways, will be required for all pre-nursing majors to explore what it takes to be a nurse and how to be successful later in their careers.

This class will also allow students to explore other health care programs that are not nursing while being taught by many different medical experts here on campus.

Other classes required in the nursing program include Evidence Guided Practice, which introduces the means of rational and practice, Mental and Behavioral Health, which is a clinical course that introduces students to mental health patients, and Foundations of Nursing, which teaches students about safety, mobility and infection control.

The council approved courses that will not only give students the hands-on experience they need, but will also teach the values and rules of nursing.

Health Systems teaches students about policy, nursing politics and the different kinds of insurance that they will have to encounter as well as Transition to Practice, a class focusing on creating resumes and portfolios as well as taking practice versions of the NCLEX exam.

Other classes approved by the council that help in real-world situations include Population Based Care, which teaches students the social determinates of healthcare and Advanced Concepts, where students will go to local hospitals to work in the intensive care unit, earning five credit courses.

The council also approved classes that build on top of each other like Pathophysiologic Concepts 1 and 2, courses that build on anatomy and physiology while being split 60-40 between in-class lecture and online courses.

Therapeutic Pharmacology 1 and 2, a new course voted on, teaches simple drug classifications at the cellular level while also explaining the interactions between drugs while Medical Terminology, a revised course, is open to both nursing and non-nursing students.

Health Assessment, a class where students can learn to listen to the heart, lungs and assess patients head to toe, was also passed by the council along with Intro Health and Illness which is a beginning course worth four credits.

The council passed Professional Development 1, 2 and 3, which teach potential future nurses about the different leadership and management positions available to them as well as how to interact with patients and their families in many different situations.

Lastly, the council approved Management of Health 1 and 2, clinical classes that build on concepts of more acute care.

A timeline for the nursing program is still unknown.

Emilie Bowman can be reached at 581-2812 or at ejbowman@eiu.edu.