Lamar University will create a new college beginning in January. The College of Nursing and Health Professions will bring together health departments from multiple colleges into a single hub.
The college will include the departments of health and kinesiology, speech and hearing sciences, social work, nutrition, and hospitality and human services, alongside the School of Nursing.
“Bringing all of our departments together under one college helps to enable interprofessional education,” Joseph Tacy, interim dean of the College of Nursing and Health Professions, said. “We can then, being under one umbrella, work together to understand all members of the team when it comes to advancing health.”
The new college not only brings healthcare professions together but also aims to fulfill community needs.
“What we try to do with academic programs at Lamar is to ensure that, first of all, it’s unique, it’s needed, it fits the profile of Lamar, and most importantly, that it is in line with what Southeast Texas wants and needs,” Brett Welch, provost and vice president of academic affairs, said. “The healthcare community came to us over the past couple of years with needs within different healthcare professions. We had a school of nursing, but they wanted to see that enhanced.”
After analyzing community needs, the university put in a legislative appropriations request for funding. These requests must be very specific, so the university focused on nursing and healthcare, Welch said.
Among the funding needs to create the college, staffing needs have to be considered.
“To build a college, you have to have what we call faculty lines, which is money to hire faculty,” Welch said. “So, we’ll be able to bring in not only faculty but high quality faculty. We’ll be able to bring in consultants that will build high quality programs, and individuals who will be liaisons between Lamar and local hospitals.
“You have to have that relationship with the community more so than you do in other programs. Liaisons to hospitals give students opportunities to have internships, clinical experiences and field experiences.”
In addition to high quality faculty and liaisons, future students also benefit from new programs over the next few years.
“What we’ll build is the medical laboratory science program, nurse anesthetist program, and we’re leaning toward an occupational therapy program,” Welch said. “In two or three years down the line, you’ll have these new programs for really high quality nursing and health professions, programs that people can graduate from and immediately gain high quality employment.”
The new programs will allow Lamar to offer more options and appeal to prospective students, Tacy said. This will enable Lamar to help fulfill that community need by allowing students to learn in Southeast Texas and then work in Southeast Texas.
“I think that this is just an amazing opportunity for Southeast Texas to be able to offer programs in our region that will hopefully help solicit applicants and individuals who want to learn and grow in this region and help to give back to Southeast Texas,” Tacy said. “I think, often, we have programs that are not available in this region, and then we have a drain of that wonderful potential as they leave and get educated in other regions.
“So, with bringing the education here, my hope is that they’re going to stay here to help give back to Southeast Texas.”