Claremont
“It is quite an accomplishment to have the program back in place,” said Pat Shinn, River Valley nursing department chairwoman. “The community needs it and the nursing community needs it. We have a shortage in nursing.”
Shinn, who became chairwoman in January 2014, said the accreditation for the RN program will cover students at the Claremont and Keene campuses who graduated this spring with a two-year associate’s degree in nursing.
“It will be retroactive for them,” Shinn said.
When the accreditation was lost in August 2013, no new classes were scheduled that fall. Classes resumed in fall 2014.
“The students came in with a promise and a prayer that we would have accreditation back in 2016,” Shinn said.
Marcy Stoll, chief executive officer of the Atlanta-based commission, referred questions to Shinn, but confirmed in a Tuesday email that “the ACEN Board of Commissioners granted initial accreditation to River Valley Community College and that we plan to mail the action letters around (mid-August).”
Stoll’s email defined initial accreditation as “a determination by the ACEN Board of Commissioners that a nursing program is in compliance with all ACEN accreditation standards.”
When the state-required accreditation from the national group was lost, River Valley’s nursing program’s approval through the New Hampshire Board of Nursing was made conditional, and Shinn had to begin submitting quarterly reports to the state. Full approval from the state board was restored in October 2014.
Shinn said the crux of the problem was a failure to properly track the results of the nursing program’s goals and outcomes.
“We were attaining them, but nobody was keeping the data,” Shinn said.
Outcome information from employers and graduates on satisfaction with the program and employment rates were two key pieces of data that were not being obtained, Shinn said.
The accreditation commission had cited the college for noncompliance on two standards: curriculum and outcomes. Specifically, the commission said there was no evidence the curriculum was developed by the faculty and regularly reviewed. Expected levels of achievements also weren’t being measured nor was there a plan to develop and maintain evaluation by the faculty. Finally, the commission noted that license examination passing rates were about 8 points below the state average in 2012.
Shinn said River Valley officials were committed to making the necessary improvements to the program. They embarked on an ambitious and time-consuming effort to do so.
“I’ve been in nursing 40 years and I have done this process at another college but not with a program that had just lost accreditation,” Shinn said. “But we had the full support of the administration. (RVCC president) Alicia Harvey-Smith got us everything we needed.”
The first step was a review of the program’s strengths.
“We looked at what was going well and keep those things,” Shinn said.
One improvement made by the college was the addition of a course in human development, which had proven to be a weak area for RVCC students taking the licensing exams. The school also created one-credit seminar courses on topics such as resume writing, studying, test-taking, and course expectations, rather than including them with disease-related coursework.
“We also reworked the courses so they flowed better for the students,” Shinn said.
Then, in February, the commission and the state licensing board made a three-day site visit to the college.
“They spoke with faculty, students, visited the labs,” Shinn said, adding they went to other facilities to see graduates in practices.
On the final day of the site visit, Shinn said, the program was told it would be getting its accreditation back, but the official word did not arrive until Monday.
“We are ecstatic,” Shinn said.
Patrick O’Grady can be reached at pogclmt@gmail.com.