A Conversation With ... Martha Baker, Ph.D.

What does the College of Nursing and Health Sciences encompass?
The college of nursing is on the Springfield campus. We have between 650 and 700 students on this campus. We have prenursing students, because we offer a full complement of general education and science courses that students would need to get into nursing school or radiology school. We have an Associate of Nursing program that has 340 to 350 students. Students take the National Council Licensure Examination to become registered nurses after they graduate from the associate degree program. Then we have a (registered nurse) to Bachelor of Science in Nursing program, and that program averages 150 to 160 students. In fall 2011, we started a Master of Science Nursing program with nurse educator and nursing administration tracks. In summer 2013, we will begin offering an Associate of Radiography.

What is your role as dean of the college?
The dean is usually classified as the chief administrative officer, an administrator who oversees the functioning of everything at the college – budget, curriculum, academic outcomes. There are program directors who assist with that, but the dean’s office oversees all of those functions in the college. Our partnership with Mercy is a very big part of that. Our college is governed by the Institutional Coordinating Committee, made up of folks from Mercy and SBU. As of June 1, (the school) will be Mercy College of Nursing and Health Sciences of Southwest Baptist University. I serve on committees on the main campus as well, and I’m chairwoman of the diversity council for SBU. I still teach, occasionally in the bachelor’s program, but last fall, I taught health care organization, and this fall, I’ll be teaching evaluation in nursing education in the MSN program.

About 100 nursing students graduated this month. What does the job market look like for new nursing graduates?
Our primary partnership is with Mercy, so our students are recruited by Mercy through job fairs and things like that early in the semester. Many of our students already have positions. The largest percentage of our students do go to work at Mercy, which continues to have a need for registered nurses. There’ve been predictions of the nursing shortage, and there was a lot of talk about it a couple of years ago. Then (as) the economy has dipped, a lot of baby boomer nurses or older nurses have delayed retirement. There are places where it is somewhat more difficult to get a job, however. In the long term, five to 10 years, there is still going to be a large number of nurses getting out of the work force because of their ages. So the job market is good, but the students can’t just walk out and name their price. I think the shortage is going to materialize at some point.

Does the college have to turn away potential nursing students?
We always have more applicants than we have slots. We take in approximately 80 associate degree students a year. We probably have another 50 who are qualified and don’t get in, because you can only take in the number that you can adequately educate with the faculty and the resources that you have. We select the 80 students, we have a short waiting list of about 10, and the other students will sometimes will continue and reapply next time … but a lot of them go other places.

What other challenges are facing nursing?
One of the biggest issues in nursing right now is the shortage of nursing faculty, looking ahead at the health care needs of baby boomers. We’re a large group. The concern is being able to meet the need to educate nurses. … There’s going to be some retirement in that area that’s going to affect the ability to educate nurses. It’s a huge challenge, because our accrediting bodies require master’s degrees for nurse faculty. It’s a nonnegotiable item, and finding master’s-prepared nurses to fill faculty spots is a challenge. Nurses who have master’s degrees and are nurse practitioners make better money being a nurse practitioner than an educator.