AB - The Terrace Standard, Wednesday, March 19, 2003 Finding instructors is key to nursing program here FINDING QUALIFIED faculty to teach at a proposed nursing program here is a problem, says an official con- nected to the project. It’s not enough to stop the propesal going to the pro- vincial government for approval but it is a worry, says Dennis Macknak of the University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC). . UNBC and Northwest Community College are work- ing on a proposal to offer a-Bachelor of Science in Nur- sing degree with the first two years provided ty the col- lege and the last two by UNBC. Graduates can then go on to: write exams for regis- tered nursing status, _ “Tf you can appreciate how difficult it is to find nurses, it is even more difficult to find ‘nurse trainers,” Macknak said last-week. He ranked the challenge of finding faculty even high- er than finding the money to run the program which has a tentative start date of Sept. 2004... ; Officials are heartened, however, by interest. already shown by potential instructors who attended an informa- , tion meeting in Terrace last month. Some of those interested people are Masters of Com- munity Health program graduates from UNBC and are registered nurses, said Macknak. “They have those qualifications and in that sense, we are growing our own instructors,” said Macknak. “We have some good people on the list.” But they already have employment, meaning the pro- Offshore oil and gas doubts grow RENEWED INTEREST north of Terrace in the po- tential for conventional oi] and gas reserves in the Bowser Basin comes at a time of increasing doubts about deposits off the north coast. Although the provincial government is pushing for exploration, energy indu- stry experls point to a number of factors, not the least of which is a mora- torium on exploratory dril- ling. There are actually two moratoria — one by the province which it wants to lift and one by the federal government. it’s more re- luctant than the province on the issue of allowing exploratory drilling. As well, experts point” . to a wide variance in prab- * able oil and gas reserves. There are also questions about native land claims and environmental issues tied to the prospect of off- shore drilling. , AH that is placed against a provincial gov- erninent target of some ac- livity by 2010. But the Na- tional Energy Board places the date at 2017. At the same time, the energy industry remains very much committed {[o the northeastern portion of the province where it al- ready knows the area, where there is infrastruc- ture in place and where environmental questions have already been an- swered. Aside from land-based conventional reserves of oil and gas, off-shore pro- ponents also have to deal with land-based unconven- tional potential. One of those is coal bed methane, a form of natural gas found embedded in coal deposits. The provincial govern- ment has placed coal-bed methane on a priority list and has been trying to round up industry interest. As well as conventional oil and gas potential in the hot gram would have a pool’ of part time instructors, . he added. The program would also need one full-time faculty member and that’s a key reason of concern, Macknak continued. An existing bachelor of sci- ence program in nursing pro- gram at UNBC’s main cam- pus is short four full-time fa- culty members as it is and the department's chair position was vacant for several years ‘before being filled by a person from England, he said. Despite the faculty challenge, UNBC and the college are forging ahead with their plan. NWCC here already offers first and second year sci- ence and other courses that are required for students to move on up for the final two years at UNBC here. Also involved is practicum placements in northwest hospitals and other health care facilities. . The plan is to have a program that accepts at least 16 students at a time. Northwestern B.C. has lacked any kind of nursing pro- gram since the early “90s, That changed last year when the college offered a li- “If you can ap- preciate how dif- ficult it is to find ‘nurses, it is even more difficult to find nurse trainers.” censed practical nursing program and graduated students. this past January. It is to start up again this fall. $TH ANNUAL FOOD DRIVE’ * “Bring a bag of non-perishable food items this - week (March 17-22) to your local Curves and join with no service fee. All groceries will be donated to local food banks. 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