Northwest Florida State College RN to BSN Nursing Program

as Nursing Leadership and Management. The director is currently pursuing her DNP at the
University of South Alabama.
One of the program faculty members is currently pursuing the Family Nurse Practitioner
post-masters certificate, with an expected completion date of December 2008. Her experience as
a clinical expert and nurse practitioner student, as well as her duties as the nursing director of a
local free medical clinic make her well-suited for teaching both the theory and clinical
components of Health Assessment. Another faculty member possesses credentials and expertise
as a nurse researcher for the United States Air Force Reserves, which cements her credibility
with students enrolled in NUR 4165 Evidence-based Nursing Practice: Incorporating Nursing
Research. Additionally, this faculty member is responsible for NUR 3678 Nursing Care of
Vulnerable Populations, a nursing elective course, partially based upon her expertise with the
vulnerable populations of newborns and research associated with the care of adoptees diagnosed
with attachment disorder.
The nursing faculty members work together to develop all courses, including formulating
course descriptions and objectives, proposing useful teaching strategies, assignments, and
assessment activities for each course. All have been actively involved in the self-study process
for the program’s accreditation by the CCNE.
This cadre of well-qualified faculty is sufficient to meet the teaching needs of the
program and accomplish the mission, goals and expected outcomes. By established practice and
program philosophy, didactic/theory classes, whether in online or traditional format, are limited
to twenty-five (25), while the student-to-faculty ratio for direct supervision clinicals does not
exceed eight to one (8:1) . These standards are commensurate with Florida Board of Nursing,
faculty recommendations, and common practice in accredited BSN programs across Florida.
Further, these standards easily accommodate the anticipated annual program enrollment of
twenty-five (25) students. Additional faculty may be added as enrollment increases and courses
are revised based upon program evaluation and stakeholder input. (Faculty teaching schedules
and workload calculations are available in the onsite resource room.)
The NWFSC-UWF cooperative program admitted fifteen, eighteen and twenty-five
students each of the last three years. As of this writing, the new stand-alone NWFSC program
has admitted nineteen students for the fall 2008 term. This data further supports the faculty
staffing plan, didactic class size maximums and clinical ratio standards established for the
Northwest Florida State College Self-Study Report for the BSN Program, August 20, 2008 Page 31 of 59