ASU East will be welcoming a year-round, 16-month baccalaureate nursing program beginning Jan. 5 with the first 40 students scheduled to graduate by the end of April 2005.
The decision to move ahead with the new program was made in August, and construction is now under way to prepare the offices and labs.
Mary Killeen, associate dean for undergraduate programs and extended education in the College of Nursing, said the program extends multiple locations.
"We are one program [that is] geographically distributed," she said.
The College of Nursing Administration will still be centrally located at main campus.
ASU Main and West have undergraduate nursing programs, but they are based on a two-year traditional semester schedule, whereas east campus offers an accelerated 16-month program.
"We are using the same materials and syllabi to keep the consistency throughout the program," said Killeen. "Being on one campus should not be any different from being on another. The education will be exactly the same."
East Provost Charles Backus said in a press release that the nursing program would complement the existing health-focused programs at east campus.
"With nursing, exercise and wellness, nutrition and human health studies, ASU East will offer a spectrum of health-focused degrees aimed at preventing and caring for illness and injury in society," he said.
The nursing program will be housed in the Health Science Center, which is located in the former base hospital, so the structure is already in place.
"A lot of the work is in making it a livable space, creating faculty offices [and] labs and getting the equipment and software necessary," Killeen said.
Linda Vaughan, chair of the nutrition department at east campus, said, "We're excited to have company. We think it'll be a really good fit, and we hope to do collaborative research on community health, maternity and child health, for example.
"We'll have a shared study area so students will be able to talk to each other and learn from each others' area of study," she added.
Reach the reporter at erika.camardella@asu.edu.
