The University of New England is expanding its nursing program from a department to a school.
School director Jennifer Morton says the change is in response to enrollment that’s nearly tripled in recent years, at a time of strong demand for nurses in Maine.
“There’s quite a nursing shortage nationally, but really markedly in Maine. And we’ve risen to the challenge over the last year both in our traditional BSN and accelerated BSN,” she says. “In the last six or seven years we’ve almost tripled our enrollment, so the growth of our program has a big part to play in that.”
Morton says about 100 nursing students are graduating from UNE each year. The new School of Nursing and Population Health will add graduate-level programs. She says the expansion is also made possible through several federal grants.
