Educational Testing Service today announced that the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation approved a $299,827 award to ETS for the purpose of evaluating the RWJF New Careers in Nursing Scholarship Program. The grant period will run from July 15, 2009 to January 15, 2012.
The scholarship program ($10,000 per student) is intended to alleviate severe nursing shortages and increase the socioeconomic and ethnic diversity of nursing professionals by enrolling college graduates with non-nursing degrees into accelerated nursing bachelor's (11-18 months) and master's (3 years) programs.
"The U.S. has a nursing shortage. It has several dimensions. Simply put, there are not enough nurses, not enough new nurses, and not enough nursing faculty to instruct the students we have now," says Catherine Millet, Ph.D., Project Director and ETS Senior Research Scientist. "This work will help to determine the effectiveness of the scholarship program in successfully recruiting people to the nursing field."
The evaluation will produce, in collaboration with the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, information on the enrollment changes that occurred at the institutions and the experiences of the participants in the New Careers in Nursing Scholarship program. The evaluation project will also produce a system of common student information for the participating colleges and universities; track the students from the point of applying through completing a nursing degree and beyond; and provide data and information to the AACN that can be used to improve the program and inform nursing schools on best practices.