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Just a few months after graduating from the Indiana University Northwest School of Nursing, the program’s first cohort of B.A/B.S. to B.S.N. students is licensed and ready to serve the Northwest Indiana healthcare community.

All 12 graduates, who completed their coursework in December, have passed the national licensure exam on their first attempt.

“This is an exemplary accomplishment,” said IU Northwest School of Nursing Dean Linda Rooda. “It is a very rigorous exam.”

The graduates include: Jennifer Doneski and Nicole Therese Uzubell, of Crown Point; Amy Elizabeth Troob, of Dyer; Chanda Leanna Hayes, of Gary; Daniel Santos Heredia, of Highland; Richard Alan Swanson, of Lowell; Michael B. Ilonze, of Merrillville; Koree Lynne Forsythe and Emily Kirk, of Portage; and Dennis M. Billena, John William Coryell, and Nanci Rick, of Valparaiso.

These students represent the first cohort of a recently established School of Nursing academic option that allows students with non-nursing degrees to earn their B.S.N. in just 19 months. The School of Nursing, which is part of the IU Northwest College of Health and Human Services, also offers the traditional four-year option, which enrolls a new class each August. The 19-month option enrolls a new cohort each May.

Nursing graduates must pass the national exam in order to practice as registered nurses.

Rooda said students who pursue the 19-month option tend to be highly motivated, because they are required to master a significant amount of material in a greatly compressed timeframe. Successful completion of the licensure exam represents the culmination of 19 months of hard work in a demanding discipline, she said.

“This group was very successful,” Rooda said.

By offering degreed professionals a more expedient route into the nursing profession, the B.A./B.S. to B.S.N. option allows the School of Nursing to educate more nurses more quickly in response to what Rooda described as a “critical shortage” of registered nurses in Northwest Indiana and across the country. As U.S. economic concerns about a recession deepen, more professionals in other fields are expected to look toward nursing and healthcare professions as a viable career alternative.

Thanks to the current nursing shortage and the constancy of the healthcare industry, Rooda said, nursing provides its workers a bulwark against an uncertain job market.

“There is absolute job security in the profession of nursing,” she said. “You can go anywhere and practice nursing. There is a rainbow of opportunity in terms of places to work.”