Recruitment for GESI nursing program in full swing

The Northern Marianas College’s Global Education Strategic Initiatives, or GESI, has so far attracted over 50 students from the Philippines and China who are hoping to enter the accelerated nursing programs either in the Summer or Fall Semester this year.

Willis Management Group Inc.’s president Sedy Demesa, whose company handles the marketing of GESI and the recruitment of students for its nursing programs, said they are now preparing the credentials of the students for evaluation by an accrediting agency in the United States.

Demesa is also the executive vice president of Pleasant Care Corp., a US-based corporation that owns and operates a chain of nursing homes and convalescent hospitals throughout Nevada and California.

Demesa explained that the prospective students’ credentials will be submitted for evaluation to the Educational Institute and Research Foundation to determine what courses or subjects already taken by the students in their home countries may be credited to the GESI nursing program.

“This basically shortens the normal duration of study because the students don’t have to take a subject twice,” she said.

The Global Education Strategic Initiative, which aims to provide a flexible, accelerated nursing program, among other courses, is expected to produce quality nurses who can meet the demands within the CNMI, the United States and in various parts of the world.

GESI, a brainchild of Gov. Juan N. Babauta and NMC president Tony Deleon Guerrero, seeks to attract foreign students, particularly Asians, to complete an accelerated nursing program that allows graduates of natural science courses to pursue nursing education at a relatively shorter period of time.

In November 2004, Demesa, along with a group of business associates and former Saipan Tribune editor Aldwin Fajardo, met with Loyola Medical College Foundation board chair Johnny Y. Fong in California where she encouraged him to support—instead of competing with—the NMC’s nursing program for which Fong readily agreed.

Demesa and Fong talked about LMCF’s plans to put up a medical school on Saipan and the NMC’s nursing program, during which she had repeatedly encouraged Fong to pool resources with the college in bringing not just international nursing students but also clinical instructors to Saipan under the GESI.

Prior to her meeting with Fong in California, Demesa was also invited by retired Philippine ambassador and former consul general to the CNMI Julia Heidemann for a meeting in Manila upon the recommendation of former Philippine labor attaché to the CNMI Araceli Maraya, who knows of Demesa’s involvement in fostering growth in the Commonwealth’s higher learning sector. Demesa emphasized during the meeting with Heidemann her intentions to fully support NMC’s educational programs.

Meanwhile, nursing students under the GESI program will train at the Commonwealth Health Center, which gives them the opportunity to actually render service at the government hospital, thereby meeting the CHC’s staffing needs.
GESI graduates may also choose to stay and work as nurses in Saipan as soon as they pass the nursing board examination, NCLEX.