Educators and Employers Collaborate for Effective Professional Development
center for nursing innovation, dr. stephanie stewart, education, professional development, step ahead, university of wisconsin-oshkosh, wausau,
When local health-care employers met with educators to discuss the critical need for more highly educated nurses, a remarkable solution arose: The Step Ahead nursing program was created through the collaboration of three schools to give nursing students a more advanced education without leaving Wausau.
Since Step Ahead began in 2005, more than 20 nurses have graduated from the program. Step Ahead has an attrition rate of less than 2 percent, according to Dr. Stephanie Stewart, director of the Center for Nursing Innovation at University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, which worked with Northcentral Technical College and the University of Wisconsin-Marathon County to develop the program.
The success that grew out of that meeting of the minds has sparked similar partnerships to train engineers and provide new ways for residents to earn bachelor’s degrees.
Lisa Peterson, operations director for The Wausau Region Chamber of Commerce, believes there is power in partnership.
“Reinventing the wheel is not an option,” Peterson says. “It’s about bringing together the right people.
I think anytime you can build partnerships that combine resources and talent, you’re just increasing opportunity for everybody: every individual, organization and the community as a whole.”
For Wausau engineering students attending the two-year UWMC, completing an engineering degree previously required traveling 150 miles or more to earn a degree with a four-year institution. But as of spring 2008, UWMC and University of Wisconsin-Platteville are bringing advanced engineering courses – complete with a mobile lab – directly to students here.
“Now a student never has to set foot on Platteville’s campus, which is about three hours away,” says Mark Holdhusen, assistant professor of engineering at UWMC. “Professors at Platteville record their classes, and within a couple of hours they are online for students.”
Holdhusen says instructors visit Wausau a few times each semester in a van stocked with lab equipment, offering several labs per visit so students can earn their lab requirements.
“Before this program, some students would move elsewhere for school and get offers to work in bigger cities,” Holdhusen says. “Now we offer this program in Central Wisconsin so students can earn engineering degrees here and stay here.”
Holdhusen says the program has garnered the support of area companies, with some offering full-tuition reimbursement.
Yet another partnership that has developed here offers enrollees in the chamber’s nine-month Leadership g2 program an opportunity to earn a minimum of nine credit hours toward an undergraduate degree at Edgewood College in Madison.
“Since the leadership program began in the late ’80s, about 42 percent of participants had unfinished bachelor’s degrees or had only completed high school, so it’s great that this program can lead to credits that can lead to a degree. We want people to have a variety of options,” Peterson says.
Story by Paige Clancy
Photo by Jeff Adkins
