Nursing program turns 50 at ECC
From its first graduating class of about seven students to more than 3,390 graduates to date, Elgin Community College's nursing program marks its 50th anniversary this year.
The program has come a long way in 50 years, said Wendy Miller, ECC's dean of health professions.
“Tuition was $6 per credit hour. Today, we're $119 per credit hour,” Miller noted.
The college admits 120 students into the associate of applied science in nursing degree program yearly, and typically has a waiting list of candidates. About 80 percent of students admitted graduate from the two-year program, and a majority of them find employment after getting licensed as registered nurses or in other health care fields within a year. Some go on to pursue a bachelor's degree, Miller said.
ECC also has partnerships with Northern Illinois University in DeKalb and Roosevelt University in Chicago for students interested in completing a bachelor's degree program in nursing, and is looking to create similar partnerships with other universities, Miller said.
“We're preparing a lot of nurses for our local health care community and beyond,” she said. “And today's students have the luxury of working with top-notch equipment. Our facilities on campus are state-of-the-art.”
ECC's $48 million, 130,000-square-foot Health and Life Sciences Building, which opened in 2012, includes 29 classrooms, labs and teaching spaces. It has an entire wing dedicated to nursing.
“It has 15 different health professions' programs, and biology, anatomy and physiology as support courses,” Miller said. “Our building is meant to simulate a hospital environment so that when students walk through it, it looks like they are in an actual nursing environment in a hospital.”
The average age of nursing students is 27 years. A majority of them are women, with men making up roughly 15 percent.
“We do have a very diverse pool as far as ethnicities, gender, age, and even our male student population we've seen an increase over the last several years,” Miller said.
Many students enter the nursing program as a second career or later in life after raising a family, officials said.
Looking back
Nurses have been a big part of ECC's history since its beginning in 1949, said Katherine Sawyer, executive director of Institutional Advancement, which includes the ECC Foundation.
At the time, Elgin's Sherman Hospital had its own nursing education program, but students needed to take other prerequisite classes, such as anatomy, biology and chemistry at the college, Sawyer said.
“In the first year, 33 of the hospital's nurses enrolled in classes at ECC,” Sawyer said.
Recognizing the demand and following a change in state law allowing community colleges to offer nursing degrees, ECC graduated its first nurses in 1967. The program received national accreditation in 1969.
Today, the college has 24 clinical partners for nursing, including Advocate Sherman Hospital, Presence St. Joseph Hospital, Cadence Delnor Hospital, Alexian Health System and Centegra Health System.
“We have a long list of hospitals that take our students for clinical hours. Our program wouldn't exist without those partnerships. It's really pivotal,” Sawyer said. “It is a competitive program.”
ECC's nursing program curriculum is being completely revamped for next year. Among the changes, students entering the program in fall 2016 will have to complete two psychology courses as prerequisites.
Contrary to the historical method of teaching through rote memorization, “It's going to be a concept-based model,” Miller said.
“It's not just simply a bunch of facts and details,” she said. “It's actually applying what they have learned to a patient's scenario. We're helping them develop critical reasoning skills. It's taken us several years to get to this point. It's very exciting. It's like a whole new paradigm for them. It is the trend in nursing education today.”