In May, Presentation College in South Dakota will close. Then SAU's College of Health and Human Services will take over the online nursing program along with its current students.
Director of Nursing at St. Ambrose, Dr. Katie Browning, says all classwork will be completed online. Then stuents will complete clinical training at hospitals and other health care clinics near their homes.
Saint Ambrose already offers a campus-based, four-year Bachelor's of Science in Nursing. But the majority of students in the online program are working LPNs (Licensed Practical Nurses) and RNs (Registered Nurses) earning their bachelor's degrees.
Browning says there's an increasing demand for nurses in rural areas, and the continuation of Presentation College's online program at St. Ambrose will help continue to fill that need across the Midwest.
St. Ambrose will hire five or six new faculty, and the online nursing classes will begin in the summer. A formal celebration will be held next fall.
It'll be called the Nano Nagle Online School of Nursing. Nagle is the nun who founded the Sisters of the Presentation in Ireland, which eventually founded the college in South Dakota.
