Southeastern University Introduces New Hybrid Associate’s Degree in Nursing Program
by RYAN MILEJCZAK
Lakeland’s Southeastern University has been offering high-quality, faith-based education to Central Florida and beyond for decades. With programs in fields like ministerial leadership, educational medicine, and business studies, they’ve helped many students achieve their professional goals.
Now, SEU is hoping to help even more people achieve their dreams and enter the nursing field with their new Associate’s Degree in Nursing (ADN) program. This two-year program will help students jumpstart their nursing careers and prepare them for the National Council Licensure Examination for Registered Nurses (NCLEX-RN), which is required in order to receive a license to practice nursing.
The program is five semesters in total, with a hybrid learning format to make the program more accessible. In the first semester, students will cover their prereqs and foundational core courses completely online. Then, starting in the second semester, they’ll take in-person night and weekend nursing classes at the main Lakeland campus, as well as within local healthcare settings.
“From the very beginning, students are learning to care for patients in a multitude of settings and specialties, all the way from their fundamental semesters where they learn the basics of how to interact with patients, assess their health, and do things that help them with their activities of daily living, until their final semester where they do a preceptorship, wherein they work one-on-one with an RN,” explains SEU’s Chief Nursing Administrator Dr. Mark Reinhardt.
As a part of their classes, students will be able to learn in the university’s state-of-of-the-art nursing simulation lab. This lab features a variety of different patient simulators, ensuring students are able to practice a variety of different real-life nursing scenarios. Plus, students will also be able to learn with the cutting-edge Anatomage Table, which provides advanced 3D anatomy visualizations and virtual dissection tools, helping students gain valuable knowledge in a simulated environment.
Students will also participate in clinical rotations as a part of their education. SEU is partnering with local hospital systems like Lakeland Regional Health to make this possible.
SEU already offers other nursing programs, such as a BS in Nursing and Masters of Science in Nursing (MSN). With this new program, the university hopes to expand their offerings and target students who might not fit with these pre-existing programs.
Thanks to its small class sizes, hybrid design, and short duration, the ADN program is ideal for students who are older, who want to earn their degree while continuing their jobs, or who have busy lifestyles.
One of SEU’s biggest goals with this program, made possible in part by Gov. Ron DeSantis’ $79 million grant for nursing education, is helping meet the demands of the nursing shortage in our state and our nation as a whole.
“There’s a huge national shortage of registered nurses, and Florida is no exception,” Reinhardt explains, adding, “With the growth spike occurring in Florida right now, more and more RNs are needed.”
Students who complete the program and pass their NCLEX-RN exam will have a variety of career options in nursing, including travel nurses, health policy nurses, and more. For those who complete the ADN program and are interested in further education, they’ll also be able to continue with SEU’s pre-existing nursing programs. These include their fully-online RN to BSN degree, as well as their fully-online Master of Science in Nursing program.
The new ADN program will be launching this fall. To help ensure small class sizes, the first cohort will be limited to 40 students. The full cohort will take didactic classes together, then be split into smaller groups for lab and clinical classes to meet the educational requirements of the Florida Board of Nursing. SEU has already received a number of applications, so if you’re interested, act fast to ensure you don’t miss out.
When asked what sets SEU’s ADN program apart from the rest, Reinhardt says, “SEU really provides a well-rounded holistic approach to nursing, and we put out
good nurses that our hospital partners clamor to hire. I think that really speaks volumes about the university, its mission, and the faculty that teaches our students.”
