jmcomicÂþ»­

My personal experience with the nursing department and its faculty has been disappointing. I strongly believe that although many of the instructors as a whole do care about the students, the overall attention to student needs has fallen to dangerous lows. I have personally witnessed several students reach out to instructors and staff to discuss feelings of being overwhelmed and physical symptoms of panic attacks. These were met with very calloused responses and little depth of care. One instructor... Read More specially stated to a student in response to her concerns that she needed to "just change her perspective." This is not acceptable from a facility that claims to be Christian oriented, or from a facility that adopts the Parse theory of Humanbecoming. Other examples have been for staff to not adhere to the same class standard as others. This includes some faculty stating that assignments need to be done in a specific way while others claim that aspects can be changed here and there. The lack of organization and standard has been inconsistent and when students fall behind or have difficulty the staff do not claim any responsibility. Instead there is a general lack of owning the mistakes on their part which leads to more stress the students carry. Other examples include classes that were held in conference rooms as appose to appropriate school classrooms due to "registrar not having space for us." There were often not enough seats and students offered to bring seats from home or hold the class itself in the students home to better aid in educational surroundings. Some classes did not have the appropriate instructor for several weeks and were proctored by staff that were not qualified to teach the course while an appropriate instructor was located. Students were told that assistance would be provided and specific faculty were in place to be able to place students in clinical sites. Students repeatedly reached out to the appropriate staff for assistance in location of clinical sites and were often not responded to or told that a site would be located yet there was no follow up or proper response. Many students were told that they needed to be working full time as nurses during the course of the Masters program and were later told that this is inaccurate due to the time constraint that many students were concerned about. The faculty have purposely encouraged applications from all religious affiliations but were hard pressed to accommodate such practices as no class on Saturdays for students that followed a Seventh Day Adventist religion. Class objectives, schedule and assignments were changed almost weekly. This includes adding brand new curriculum or new projects halfway through the semester. This added to the poor foundation and confusion that many students had and they were told to "be flexible." Some instructors were even quoted saying "I don't know why I'm teaching this class, I was never in this area." When referring to why they were teaching a class on a subject they were never directly affiliated with. A fee of over $1,000 per student was added to students financial statements without alerting the students beforehand or discussing what the fee was for. When students were told this was to accommodate lab time, actors for OSKE exams and lab equipment, students pointed out in vain that they only use the lab one time per semester, actors are almost entirely volunteers and the equipment was generally used up to four times per semester. Many of the instructors, although excellent practitioners, were held to a very low standard in terms of academics. Poor quality in education is shown through instructors reading off the slides that they themselves received off the internet. Another example is test questions being taken from unscholarly sources such as Quizlet for exams. Students will often contact instructors for additional resources to better their practice and are told that the school "cannot teach everything" and therefore the student needs to seek help from youtube or pay to attend a skills workshop.

The biggest pros for me are: The pre-nursing grad program has allowed me to complete the pre-requisites required for the Entry Level Masters of Nursing at Cal Baptist. I was not able to get into other colleges and receiving funding since I have a Bachelors degree. This program has given me what I need to pursue my dream job. The hybrid lab classes allow me to study at home reducing transportation cost and time to be available for my daughter as a single parent. The con: is that I do have to commute... Read More an hour each way once a week on a Saturday and the tuition is very expensive for the loans I have to repay later.