Now
35
Tue
19
Wed
14
by Jack Bartlett
TOPICS:
KEARNEY, Neb. — The University of Nebraska Kearney is helping to address the statewide nursing shortage with a new scholarship.
The university recently launched the Lahaye Nursing Scholarship worth over $10,000 over two years to provide central and western Nebraska students additional financial support to pursue this profession.
"It's important that we attract students from rural Nebraska that want a career in nursing and entice them to stay in rural Nebraska," Peggy Abels, UNK Director of Health Sciences, said.
This comes during a nursing shortage across the state. According to the Nebraska Hospitals Association, 66 of Nebraska’s 93 counties have been deemed medically underserved, 73 have less than the national average ratio of Registered Nurses to patients, and 9 counties have no registered nurses.
According to the Nebraska Center for Nursing, the expected RN shortage will reach 3,238 in 2025. UNK says this program is supposed to help curb this issue.
"There's currently a nursing shortage across the state of Nebraska of almost 5,500 nurses in 2025, and it's really a much more pronounced shortage in rural communities, so the generous grant from the Glenn and Pearle Lahaye estate is really targeted towards students from central and western Nebraska with the goal of providing financial incentive and financial assistance to students to pursue a career in nursing," Abels said.
The nursing scholarship is supported by a more than $600,000 estate gift made by Glenn and Pearle Lahaye which will be used to support the Health Sciences Department at UNK.
"Health sciences is able to take the generous gift from the Lahaye estate and leverage that against other foundation funds that we have from other generous donors and put together this scholarship package that is going to be a more substantial benefit to our pre-nursing students by being able to offer them $10,000 over the two years of the pre-nursing program," Abels said.
The scholarship is available to incoming students who have a high school GPA of 3.0 or higher and an ACT score of 20 or higher and must plan to continue their nursing studies at the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s College of Nursing.
UNK also mentioned that preference will be given to students from Sheridan, Keya Paha, and Cherry Counties or areas along and west of Highway 281.
