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The Health Care Futures Grant

The Community College of Rhode Island (CCRI), a comprehensive, public, open access associate degree-granting institution of higher education serving the state through four campuses offering more than 80 programs of study, proposes to build its capacity to meet workforce needs in the Health Care industry through a strategic partnership with the Health Partnership Council (HPC), a workforce development initiative of the Hospital Association of Rhode Island (HARI). Partners in the HPC and in this "Health Care Futures" project proposal include HARI, the Care New England Health System, Landmark Medical Center, the RI Department of Education (RIDE), and seven components of Rhode Island’s Workforce Investment System.

Health care is a high growth, high demand industry in Rhode Island where demand for quality workers far exceeds available supply. During the 2002 to 2012 projection period, nearly one-quarter of new jobs in Rhode Island are expected to be in health care. Seventy percent of the health care industry’s job growth will occur in just thirty selected occupations. Six of these "high demand" occupations are targeted for inclusion in this project: Registered Nurse, Physical Therapy Assistant, Radiologic/Sonography Technologist, Cardio-Respiratory Technologist, Clinical Lab Technologist, and Licensed Practical Nurse. CCRI offers nationally accredited programs preparing students for all six targeted occupations. Each of these professions requires a national licensure or certification examination, a ready outcome measure of success.

The Health Care Futures partnership has identified three significant challenges that limit CCRI’s capacity to meet industry demand: barriers to recruitment, persistence and graduation in targeted programs; a shortage of qualified faculty; and a shortage of clinical sites offering meaningful educational experiences. To address these barriers and the critical workforce shortages, the Health Care Futures approach strengthens three key aspects of the education and training system for the future health care workforce: improving student recruitment and retention, providing professional development for nursing and allied health faculty, and expanding nursing clinical sites and clinical preceptorships. The project will develop:

  1. A replicable model of education and training that includes recruitment, persistence, and retention support services through its established Student Success Centers on each campus to specifically improve allied health and nursing students’ success to increase graduation rates and licensure examination pass rates in nursing and other targeted degree programs. All partners will assist CCRI in recruitment. The College will offer a range of services and resources based on research and best practices in developmental education, including academic evaluation and diagnostic testing, tutoring, supplemental instruction; courses to improve study skills and learning strategies; academic and career counseling; and mentors.
  2. A faculty development model that strengthens instructional skills of current faculty and develops potential new faculty, building on resources of the College’s Center for Learning and Teaching and the HARI Colleagues in Caring – RI Nurse Faculty Externship program.
  3. Innovative strategies to expand the number of available clinical sites and qualified clinical instructors to support expansion of the nursing program developed with HPC partners.

Health Care Futures will be integrated into CCRI’s Division of Health and Rehabilitative Sciences, with a Project Manager reporting to the division’s Dean. Three full-time Success Coordinators for Health Sciences Students will work directly with health science students to improve their academic performance and persistence, aided by tutors. A part-time Data Manager will track student enrollment, persistence, graduation, and placement data as well as DOL Common Measures for undergraduates and continuing professional education students. The budget for this easily replicable model is reasonable and sufficient to achieve targeted goals.


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