State Board of Community Colleges Convenes Collaborators to Address State’s Nurse Shortage

Several Investments were Approved to Help Grow Student Enrollment and to Make Community College Courses and Material More Accessible

RALEIGH – The N.C. State Board of Community Colleges (NCSBCC) today received a report addressing the nursing shortage in North Carolina. Following are a few highlights about the critical need for the N.C. Community College System (NCCCS) to be equipped with the resources to meet the state’s need for nurses:

  • Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projected employment of registered nurses (RNs) to increase 9% from 2020 to 2023. A projected 194,500 openings for RNs is expected each year over the next decade.
  • The pandemic has exacerbated the already critical problem with thousands of nurses leaving clinical positions and even more leaving the nursing profession all together.
  • The American Nurses Association sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in September of 2021, urging the country to declare the current nursing shortage a national crisis. 
  • A recent national survey found that 34% of responding nurses plan to leave their jobs in 2022.
  • The American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN) reports that vacancy rates for nursing faculty from 6.5% in 2020 to 8% in 2021.
  • U.S. nursing schools turned away more than 80,000 qualified applicants in 2019, mostly because of faculty shortages. Fewer nursing educators mean fewer new nurses.
  • In 2020, a total of 5,464 nursing students graduated in North Carolina. Of these, 2,576 were associate degree (ADN) in nursing graduates.
  • Mercer reports that North Carolina will be among the top five states for nursing shortages by 2026.

The report was provided by Dr. Cheryl Jones of The Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research at the University of North Carolina, Dr. Tywana Lawson of Nash Community College, Ms. Fern Aspen of Southwestern Community College, Dr. Lori Byrd of the N.C. Community College System Office, and Ms. Jamie Dagenhard, a Trauma ICA Nurse.

The State Board approved several investments aimed at growing student enrollment to address workforce demand issues and to bolster North Carolina’s economic recovery efforts. One action included an investment of $810,000 in the Minority Male Initiative for the fiscal years of 2022-23, 2023-24, 2024-25, and 2025-26. The investment will help address and increase the progression and completion rates of minority male students. These funds were appropriated by the N.C. General Assembly.

The other action was the Board’s approval of an allocation of $976,356 for fiscal year 2022-23 to expand the reach of career coaches to be placed in high schools to assist students with determining career goals and identifying community college programs that would enable students to achieve these goals. This funding provides eight new coaches and will also cover the cost of seven existing coach positions. The reoccurring funds were appropriated from the state budget to be used for salary, benefits, and travel expenses. Two career coaches each will be provided to Catawba Valley Community College, Fayetteville Technical Community College, Robeson Community College, and Tri-County Community College; and one career coach each will be provided to Halifax Community College, Piedmont Community College, Richmond Community College, Surry Community College, Vance-Granville Community College, and Western Piedmont Community College.

NCCCS Thomas Stith reported on a general framework to implement goals that were established by the State Board for 2022. Those goals bolster the System Office’s current work in recruitment and retention, communications with key stakeholders, growing student enrollment, improving administrative and programmatic changes, and establishing a platform for identifying and developing initiatives to support the stabilization and advancement of rural colleges in light of the demographic and funding challenges that many of them face. These goals will help strengthen the System Office and unified Community College System while it continues to fuel North Carolina’s job engine by meeting workforce demands. 

The Board approved several System Office personnel actions. First, new information security officers were approved to fill three of nine new cybersecurity positions designed to support the NCCCS’ development, delivery, and continuous improvement of the community college’s cybersecurity and risk management program. With the approval of these positions, the System Office now fills six of the nine positions appropriated by the General Assembly. The three new hires approved are as follows:

  • Nick Harrison is a certified information systems security professional (CISSP) and brings close to 20 years of information technology experience in higher education. While working with the UNC System Office, Harrison was the technical lead for centralized hosting of Ellucian Banner ERP for 10 UNC schools. 
     
  • Lisa Helton is a career information technologist with more than 20 years of N.C. community college and public-school service. Her work experience spans the full range from technology leadership to cloud, network, and security administration.
     
  • Michael Wharton is a certified information security manager (CISM) with more than 15 years of information technology experience and a passionate information security professional. Wharton’s career reflects progressive roles, spanning multiple industries across the private and public sector, with his most recent exclusively dedicated to the educational field.

The final personnel action approved by the Board was the promotion of Elizabeth Stoddard to the position of director of the System Office’s Analytics and Reporting section. She has 12 years of experience working with educational data in college, university, and system-level settings and has worked with the System Office as part of Research and Performance Management for three years. In her current role, she has built out 50+ NCCCS dashboard sites that include over 1,000 dashboards using college and System Office data. Stoddard has also provided leadership in the implementation of Power BI to internal and external stakeholders.

About the North Carolina State Board of Community Colleges (SBCC)

The SBCC is organized and operates in accordance with N.C. General Statute 115D-2.1, as amended by Session Law 2021-90. The Board has 22 members, 18 who are appointed to six-year terms, and four ex officio members (State treasurer, lieutenant governor, commissioner of Labor, and N.C. Student Government Association president). Meetings typically occur the third Thursday and Friday of each month, with the exception of June and December. Read more.

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