The program is in the preliminary stages, said Fabiola Arvizu, vice president for academic affairs at Western.

Currently, there are no nursing programs offering bachelor's degrees in Whatcom County.

Earning a degree from a four-year university would allow for a slight increase in pay for nurses, but patient's care does not change depending on the degree earned, said David Knapp, educational planner at Whatcom Community College.

At this point, Western is in the informal stage of introducing a nursing program to the university, said Catherine Riordan, Western’s provost and vice president for academic affairs.

“[We are] building on Western’s interdisciplinary sophistication to work on palliative care,” Riordan said.

There has consistently been vocalization in the Western community about the lack of a nursing program, Riordan said. 

As of now, the program is looking to bring in students who already have an Associate Degree in Nursing from a community college, Riordan said.

The program would be designed for people who are already working in the field but are looking to have a Bachelor of Science in Nursing, or BSN, Riordan said.

Although Western does not offer the program yet, Whatcom Community College does offer a nursing program.

Whatcom's program gives students an Associate of Science in Nursing Degree, making them eligible to take the National Council Licensure Examination for Registered Nurses, according to the Whatcom Community College's website.

Whatcom offers two different programs to students that would allow them to receive a nursing degree, Knapp said.

The first program is a two-year, face-to-face program, which is the standard two-year nursing program, requiring students to attend lectures and labs, Knapp said.

This program only starts during fall quarter, he said.

The second program is a part-time online hybrid program, which combines online lectures and campus labs, Knapp said.

Students are enrolled part-time every quarter, including summer, for three years, and the program starts about every year and a half, Knapp said.

Students must complete some prerequisite courses before starting the program, Knapp said. Those classes take about a year to a year and a half to complete, he said.

“Whatcom’s nursing program has a great reputation and has for a number of years, as far as high graduation rate and high licensing pass rate,” Knapp said.

The program Western is proposing is called an upside-down degree, because students earn the Registered Nurse Degree before earning the bachelor’s degree, but it is a common form of education, Riordan said.

This program is important because in the next five to eight years, the entry-level requirement for nurses could be a BSN, Riordan said.

“[A four-year degree gives] a higher level of working with knowledge and critical thinking,” Riordan said. “The kinds of reports the students will be writing will be more sophisticated, pulling information from more disciplined areas to take a more critical look.”

Aman Sahota, a Western senior who completed her Pre-Associate's in Nursing Degree at Highline Community College, said it would be great if Western were to start a nursing program.

She is earning her bachelor’s degree in political science and has applied to graduate schools to become a nurse practitioner, Sahota said. 

Older people were in classes at Highline because they had difficulty finding jobs and they knew nursing was in demand, Sahota said.

Sahota said the program at the community college was hands on and interactive.

“Western is so nice to have small, integrated classrooms that it won’t be as difficult for students to transition,” Sahota said.

Riordan said she hopes the nursing program will have a website up by this summer, but the program would not start until fall of 2013 at the earliest.

“This is an exciting opportunity for Western Washington University," Riordan said.