The 2024 graduating class of the Clatsop Community College nursing program.

Clatsop Community College is putting $100,000 toward its recently expanded nursing program with the help of a new grant from Providence Health & Services.

The funding, which the college has designated for the 2025-2026 school year, builds upon an initial $100,000 grant awarded last year — money that has helped expand the program’s reach amid a nationwide nurse shortage spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Now, more than ever, we need to meet the needs of filling a lot of empty spots that are available for registered nurses,” said Tina Kotson, the college’s interim director of nursing and allied health.

The initial funding helped bring the college’s nursing cohort up from 20 to 24 students, representing a 20% increase in admissions and the potential to add more than a dozen extra trained nurses to the community over the next four years. That first expanded cohort will be graduating this spring, with a second expanded cohort graduating the following year.

Looking ahead, Kotson said the new grant will help the college maintain the same commitment for the group of students starting in September.

The money has also allowed the college to put more resources toward admissions, recruitment and retention, purchase new equipment and hire additional adjunct instructors. Those changes have been a game-changer for supporting the program’s larger cohorts, Kotson said.

“It may not sound like a lot, but that’s four more people that we need equipment for, whether it’s equipment in the lab, whether it’s extra manikins, IV poles and pumps, whether it’s manikins that we use for simulation,” Kotson said. “So the grant that Providence has given us — the first grant — has allowed us to accept those 24 students, those extra four bodies, and actually serve them and the rest of the group in a way that they’re getting their needs met, they’re staying in the program, they’re going to graduate. And now with this new grant, we’re going to be able to continue that commitment, because without that, it would be very difficult to accept more than 18 to 20 students every year.”

Bethany Fritz Gunn is the co-president of the Clatsop Community College Nursing Club and a part of the college’s first 24-person cohort set to graduate this June. She said she’s seen the impact the initial grant from Providence has made, especially in helping hire a new staff member in charge of facilitating community-based experiences with local health care providers like Clatsop Behavioral Healthcare, the Columbia Memorial Hospital cancer center and the Providence Seaside Hospital outpatient infusion clinic.

“Every department is different, and nursing is so specialized, and there’s like a million different places you could go,” Fritz Gunn said. “So it’s really neat to kind of see what nurses do in different places, and try on that job for a little bit, see if you like it, see if you want to go down that path. So I’m really grateful for that opportunity.”

Sarah Dove, another nursing club co-president set to graduate in 2025, has had a similar experience.

“This program is wonderful,” she said. “I love that it’s a small class. There’s 24 of us. … It makes it so you have a lot more one-on-one time with the instructors, and it’s a lot more personal.”

For the past decade or so, Clatsop Community College has been part of the Oregon Consortium for Nursing Education, a partnership between nine Oregon community colleges and six Oregon Health & Science University campuses. The partnership gives students the opportunity to go on to earn their bachelor’s degree online through OHSU after graduating from community college — an opportunity both Dove and Fritz Gunn have said they intend to take advantage of.

One highlight of the partnership is that it gives students the chance to further their education while still living in Clatsop County, often while working at one of the local hospitals.

Kotson said the nursing program has a long history of collaborating with local health care providers to give students hands-on learning opportunities. She hopes the new grant will allow that collaboration to continue to thrive and grow.

“Both of our local hospitals are really needing more local people, and we want to meet that need. That’s why we exist at Clatsop Community College,” Kotson said. “We want to meet employers’ needs locally. So this grant just allows us to do so many things better and in an expanded way to meet those needs.”