{"id":2474,"date":"2010-02-23T10:26:44","date_gmt":"2010-02-23T17:26:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=2474"},"modified":"2011-03-04T08:04:03","modified_gmt":"2011-03-04T15:04:03","slug":"then-and-now-baccalaureate-nursing-education-at-tcnj","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=2474","title":{"rendered":"Then and Now: Baccalaureate Nursing Education at TCNJ"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"67
TCNJ's first class of baccalaureate-track nursing students. The photo is from the 1967 "Seal" yearbook.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The College\u2019s 111-year history of offering only education-related degrees came to an end in 1966 with the matriculation of the first class of baccalaureate-track nursing students. As the school prepares to celebrate the 40th anniversary of that class\u2019s graduation, we take look at some of the changes that have occurred during TCNJ\u2019s four decades of offering baccalaureate-nursing education.<\/p>\n

Barbara Medoff Cooper<\/strong>, Jo Ann Ennis<\/strong>, and Theresa M. Valiga<\/strong>, alumnae from the 40th anniversary class, said the College\u2019s first non-education majors faced several challenges. For starters, TCNJ had no nursing building, no medical library, and the only lab available to nursing students was a makeshift one set up in the Decker Hall basement. \u201cThey put a few beds down there, and a few mannequins, so it wasn\u2019t without a completely human look to it,\u201d recalled Ennis about the setup in Decker.<\/p>\n

There were also no nursing-specific science classes, Valiga and Medoff-Cooper recalled. Instead, the students in the nursing program enrolled in anatomy and physiology courses that were offered through the biology department. This quickly led to problems when, halfway through the semester, the students complained that they \u201cwere still talking about owls\u201d and had yet to discuss human anatomy or physiology, Valiga said. When she and her classmates returned from mid-semester break the following week, they were notified that they were no longer enrolled in the biology department\u2019s Mammalian Physiology course. A new class, Human Physiology, had been quickly established for the soon-to-be nurses. It would meet three times per week for five hours each session so that a semester\u2019s-worth of material could be covered prior to the end of the term. Despite the hectic workload this meant, the students \u201cwere thrilled that we were going to actually start talking about human beings,\u201d Valiga remembered.<\/p>\n

Unlike their counterparts in the education programs, TCNJ\u2019s first nursing students had a strict dress code. \u201cWe were the only ones on campus who couldn\u2019t wear jeans to class,\u201d Medoff-Cooper said. The soon-to-be nurses had to wear skirts (slacks were not allowed) to all class meetings. Added Valiga: \u201cThis was the mid-1960s and everyone was freaking out and walking around in tie-dye shirts, and here we were in sweaters and skirts,\u201d Valiga remembered. Marian Hosford<\/strong>, the program\u2019s first chairperson, \u201cwanted to make a statement to campus about what the program was\u2014that it was not a typical, technical, do-the-task kind of a program. It had an intellectual and professional component,\u201d Valiga said.<\/p>\n

In this vein, Hosford also decided that her baccalaureate-educated nurses would not wear the \u201ctraditional\u201d nurses\u2019 uniforms of white caps and white stockings, thus further differentiating them from nurses who were educated in hospital diploma programs. \u201cShe really wanted us to be trailblazers,\u201d recalled Medoff-Cooper. The students were given gold lab coats, white blouses, blue skirts, and brown ripple-soled shoes to wear when they left campus for clinical assignments. The students\u2019 reaction to the uniforms was less than enthusiastic. \u201cWe were happy we had to leave so early in the morning for clinical,\u201d joked Valiga,\u201d so that none of the other students saw us in the uniforms.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ennis recalled that several students in the program (herself included) were disappointed that they wouldn\u2019t be receiving the traditional white nurses\u2019 cap. \u201cWe thought at the time that, if you\u2019re going to be a nurse, you\u2019ve got to have a nurse\u2019s cap,\u201d she explained. Hosford eventually relented on this matter, and the students were allowed to design an \u201cofficial\u201d cap for the program, Valiga said. But looking back now, Ennis realizes that Hosford was right. \u201cShe knew that [caps] weren\u2019t going to be a part of a nurses \u2018official\u2019 uniform in the future,\u201d Ennis said. \u201cIt\u2019s an old-fashioned idea of nursing.\u201d Ennis said her cap sat in a drawer for years until she donated it to the College archives.<\/p>\n

The Department of Nursing achieved Division status in 1972, and a year later faculty and students moved into their own building. According to a self-study report authored by Emerita Professor Gladys Word<\/strong>, the division\u2019s move into its own building was an important step in that it helped give \u201cphysical campus visibility\u201d to the program. Word\u2019s report also indicated that the mid-1970s saw two important firsts for the nursing division: the program enrolled its first African-American and male students.<\/p>\n

In 1980, the Division of Nursing received a charter from Sigma Theta Tau, the nursing honors society. One year later, the division achieved School status. Susan Bakewell-Sachs<\/strong>, the Carol Kuser Loser Dean of what is now called the School of Nursing, Health, and Exercise Science, said that enrollments in the school\u2019s baccalaureate program mirrored national averages, hitting a high in the mid-1980s, declining, and then rebounding since 2000.<\/p>\n

By 1997, the program had outgrown the old Nursing Building and moved into Paul Loser Hall.<\/p>\n

\"nursing
The Clinical Learning Lab allows today's nursing students to learn and practice on computer-controlled "Sim" patients.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Curriculum revisions were implemented several times during the program\u2019s history. \u201cObviously our program is in a constant state of change as necessitated by nursing being a human science,\u201d explained Professor Susan Boughn<\/strong>, who is in her 31st year of teaching at the College. \u201cNursing faculty constantly revise every aspect of their teaching, including content and process\u2014be that in lectures, laboratories, and clinicals. If we didn’t, our patients and clients would die.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe lives of the healthcare-consuming public depend upon nursing programs being highly adaptable and fluid as they respond to an ever-increasing body of knowledge,\u201d Boughn added.<\/p>\n

Perhaps one of the biggest curriculum changes coincided with the College-wide academic transformation. For baccalaureate nursing students, transformation brought about an emphasis on computerized simulation as a learning and assessment tool. Loser Hall\u2019s state-of-the-art labs house a family of computer-controlled \u201cSim patients\u201d\u2014including a Sim woman that goes through labor and delivers a baby. (That\u2019s quite a change from the early days when, Ennis recalled, she and fellow students used oranges to learn how to give injections.)<\/p>\n

\u201cGoing into a patient\u2019s room for the first time knowing that you\u2019re going to make a physical impact upon their life is an extremely scary prospect\u201d for nursing students, Meghan Farrell \u201908<\/strong> explained. \u201cFor me, working in the Sim labs helped prepare me for real-world experiences when dealing with patients [and] gave me confidence.\u201d<\/p>\n

One constant during the program\u2019s 40 years has been the emphasis given to clinical experiences. \u201cThere is no way to replace students being in live patient-care settings\u2026and a great deal of effort is put into ensuring quality experiences,\u201d Bakewell-Sachs said. Since the program\u2019s inception, students have been required to complete numerous clinical experiences as part of their studies. Today, TCNJ nursing students are placed at sites throughout Mercer, Hunterdon, Middlesex, Burlington, and Bucks Counties, Bakewell-Sachs said.<\/p>\n

Bringing things full circle, Ennis, who is the coordinator of childbirth and parent education and a lactation consultant at Capital Health Systems in Trenton, said that almost every semester TCNJ nursing students are assigned to her hospital for clinical assignments.<\/p>\n

\u201cI tell them stories about how things were in my day and they\u2019re often amazed,\u201d Ennis said with a laugh.<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/span>
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More than a century of awarding only education-related degrees ended with the matriculation of TCNJ\u2019s first baccalaureate-track nursing students in 1966. Here is a brief look at the program\u2019s four decades.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":2478,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni-corner","category-march-2010"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2474\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}