Despite the fierce competition, Austin Community College emerges victoriously!

Today, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board announced that Austin Community College is the recipient of the 2004-05 Nursing Innovation Grant Program and will be awarded $273,263 for its grant entry “Promoting Retention in Distance Education ‘PRIDE’ Project.” More than 95 four-year and two-year institutions submitted grant applications to the Coordinating Board under the Nursing Innovation Grant Program.

“This grant will allow us to provide support to students in our online option through a variety of online and telephone services, such as, remediation, advising, mentoring, and technical support,” said Jere Hammer, ACC’s department chair of the Associate Degree Nursing Program. “We are excited to receive a grant that helps us further advance our program.”

Under this grant the project goals are to :

Develop and provide online and after hour support services, comparable to those used in the associate degree nursing Student Retention Model for online students in the ADN Program.

Adapt existing video vignettes for critical thinking in medical surgical setting for web delivery and purchase web-based computer aided instruction materials in order to provide curriculum enhancements that are comparable to what has proven helpful to nursing students in the traditional track.

According to Don Brown, commissioner, Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, more than 42 grant awards, totaling $3,878,911, will be funded under the Nursing Innovation Grant Program.

This program was established by the 77th Legislature to help relieve the state’s nursing shortage and is funded with proceeds from the Texas Tobacco Lawsuit Settlement.