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Nursing summer class to proceed
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Posted on May 19 2005
Nursing students at Northern Marianas College can now breathe a sigh of relief, with the college finding a way for their summer class to proceed.
NMC president Antonio Deleon Guerrero said yesterday that the Governor’s Office and the Legislature had committed to providing the college a supplemental budget of $200,000 for the nursing program.
Deleon Guerrero said the NMC board of regents and administration were compelled to seek the government’s help after the students pleaded the case to the college officials. The previous plan to cancel the summer classes would have caused the students to graduate one semester late.
“There’s no need to cancel the summer classes now that we’ve got support from the central government. Our three teachers will be instructing the 26 nursing students starting Monday,” Deleon Guerrero said.
Earlier, NMC School of Nursing chair Lois Gage had disclosed that the school’s Maternal and Child Health Nursing class this summer had to be cancelled due to a lack of instructor.
Because nursing courses must be taken in sequence, any delay in the students’ completion of one class will affect the rest of the requirements.
Gage had said that, although the college had experienced extreme difficulty over the past two years in finding an instructor to teach the class, this would have been the first summer that the class would not be provided.
She had attributed the problem to the low salary rates being offered by the college for adjunct faculty.
Part-time teachers, which are needed to teach the nursing class, are paid between $500 and $700 per credit hour, depending on the teacher’s educational background.
With the course having eight credit hours, an instructor with a master’s degree would get paid a total of $5,600, while a teacher with a bachelor’s degree would receive $4,000.
Gage had also said that this is barely enough compensation, as the nursing class actually requires an instructor to be with the students not only eight hours, but 36 hours.
