MSU nursing dean in familiar territory

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- As Mountain State University officials face growing criticism from students who say administrators have unsuccessful to promulgate critical information about their academics, MSU's new nursing vanguard is in familiar territory. Dr. Sheila Garland faced similar complaints final year when she was chairwoman of a nursing program during a University of Arkansas during Pine Bluff. Garland resigned in July 2010 amid a major controversy during UAPB when a nursing program was suspended after a entire nursing category learned they would not be eligible to graduate.In July 2010, all of a 22 seniors in a Arkansas nursing program unsuccessful a school's compulsory exit examination as well as detected they could not receive their diplomas, according to Arkansas headlines reports. UAPB students blamed administrators for inadequately preparing them for a exit examination as well as keeping them in a dark about their graduation status."We have not had adequate instruction to even prepare to take a test," Brittany Davis, a nursing tyro during UAPB, told Fox 16 News final year. "So when a time comes as well as no one passes it, now they want to destroy everyone." Following a controversy, a Arkansas state nursing board put UAPB's nursing program upon conditional capitulation for low pass rates of a compulsory chartering examination as well as said a school needed to change a grading as well as grievance policies, according to a July 2010 letter from a Arkansas State Board of Nursing. No new students could be admitted to a program for a next two years. Garland told a Arkansas headlines hire that while she was surprised that a total category unsuccessful a exam, "It's not unusual for students not to encounter program requirements." Garland did not return a Gazette-Mail's calls for comment. Garland resigned as a Arkansas school's nursing chairwoman in July 2010 after serving for five years. She was declared vanguard of Mountain State's nursing program in March -- during about a same time a inhabitant accrediting group revoked MSU's inhabitant nursing accreditation.Since Garland has become vanguard during MSU, students say a similar miss of information exchnage has marked her tenure. That makes them nervous. "I am worried," said Stephanie Rinehart, a comparison nursing tyro during MSU. "I don't want that to happen to my class." Students say Garland has yet to speak to a school's nursing students as an entire category as well as has provided them misleading information about a school's accreditation problems. "I had no clue who [Garland] was," Jodie Harris, a comparison during Mountain State's nursing program, said upon Tuesday. "The first time I saw her was during final week's forum." Garland scheduled an open forum upon Dec. 2 to transparent up nursing students' escalating concerns about a school's shaky accreditation status. At Friday's meeting, Garland gave students firm guarantees that even if a school lost a state accreditation, MSU's nursing students would be able to sit for a chartering examination to become registered nurses. "Be assured that we will be able to take a examination if we do what we need to do to get out of MSU," said Garland. "[The state nursing board] has assured us that no matter what a decision, all of we will be taken care of." Laura Rhodes, executive director of a Board of Examiners for Registered Professional Nurses, refuted Garland's statement upon Tuesday prior to a group of MSU students. Rhodes said if a state nursing board yanked MSU's provisional accreditation, students would not be able to sit for their chartering exams. MSU's nursing program was denied alternate inhabitant accreditation by a Commission upon Collegiate Nursing Education final week as well as is in danger of losing a provisional accreditation status with a state nursing board if it doesn't correct major program deficiencies. "Issues with Mountain State way pre-date Dr. Garland," Alice Faucett, general counsel as well as director of discipline with a state nursing board, told MSU students upon Tuesday. "I'm sure she's feeling overwhelmed with everything that's happening. But that doesn't excuse a miss of communication." Students during a Arkansas nursing school were also worried about not sitting for their chartering exams final year.

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