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By Mike Stepanovich

A half-day-long legislative hearing that focused on the critical need for nurses and the difficulty universities and colleges are having in filling that need attracted educators, students and medical professionals to CSUB on Feb. 22.

The hearing, conducted by state Sen. Dean Florez, D-Shafter, was scheduled, Florez said, after he saw a story in Bakersfield media about a long line of students who waited for several days – even sleeping in the Dorothy Donohoe Hall galleria – to submit their application to CSUB’s nursing program.

CSUB is the only CSU campus of the 14 with nursing programs that is not listed as impacted by the CSU Chancellor’s Office. An impacted designation means that the university can be selective in admitting students. But as a non-impacted program, CSUB must admit any qualified applicant on a first-come-first-served basis. That was what prompted students to begin lining up days in advance to submit their nursing-program applications. In all, 115 students who spent nights on cots, air mattresses and sleeping bags applied for 60 openings in CSUB’s program. Nursing Department staff and faculty, with the help of local businesses, made students as comfortable as possible by providing hot drinks and carrot cake.

Allison Jones, assistant vice chancellor for student academic support, assured Florez during his testimony that CSUB would be designated as impacted for the 2006-07 academic year and beyond.

But greater problems exist, said CSUB Provost Jim George. He testified that the demand for nurses is so great that new CSUB graduates command starting salaries of $55,000 a year, and overtime can often push earnings beyond $100,000 annually. That’s stiff competition when it comes to trying to hire nursing faculty: the university can’t afford to pay as much, so nurses who might want to teach don’t because they don’t want to take a pay cut.

Marie Farrell, chair of CSUB’s nursing department, said CSUB has 8.5 faculty members and needs 14-plus. Faculty members are pushed to their limit, she said. Additionally they’re approaching retirement age, increasing the pressure on the university to hire faculty.

She said that even with increased state funding, CSUB would need additional funding. She cited figures from Jones’s testimony that other CSU campuses – Long Beach, Fresno and Hayward among them – had received significant local support to augment their programs.

“President (Horace) Mitchell has said that the state gives us the funds to be a good university, but it’s the community support that will make us a great university,” she said. “That community support is especially important now.”