Nursing faculty fares well for reaccreditation
OCCC’s nursing program has been recommended for national reaccreditation for the next eight years, the maximum allowed, said Rosemary Klepper, nursing director.
Klepper is proud of how well the program measured up.
Every eight years, the program must undergo the reaccreditation process, she said.
The process includes an intensive review by the National League for Nursing Accrediting Commission Inc.
“It’s about meeting standards above the minimal standards,” Klepper said.
Rajani Tammareddy, a Nursing Process III student, said she thinks the program at OCCC is exceptional.
Tammareddy attended an open meeting held by the NLNAC team March 8.
Katherine Townsend, part of the reaccredi-tation team, said the open eeting is held so the reaccreditation team can listen to community, staff and student opinions about the nursing program.
The team was comprised of three people who did not know one another beforehand.
Townsend is a nursing professor at El Camino Community College in Torrance, Calif.
Judy Murphy is a nursing professor at the Community College of Rhode Island in Lincoln, R.I.
Patricia Fonder, a nurse from Englewood Hospital and Medical Center in Englewood, N.J., rounded out the group.
Upon arrival at OCCC, the team began an intensive review of the nursing program, Klepper said.
This included a review of a 196-page selfstudy submitted by the college last fall. It also included interviews with faculty, staff, students, graduates and employers, she said.
The OCCC nursing program currently has 254 students enrolled and boasted a first-time pass rate on the national licensure exam of about 84 percent last year.
The nursing reaccreditation team said OCCC has a well-qualified nursing director, a “collegial and dedicated faculty,” and “a stellar campus mini-hospital lab and human patient simulator lab.”
OCCC’s nursing program has a laboratory designed to look like a hospital Intensive Care Unit and also has a human patient simulator that looks like a patient and mimics real-life medical situations.
Editor Christiana Kostura can be reached at editor@occc.edu.
