RN to BSN Online Information Session

Kylie DeHaven:  Hello everyone, welcome to the RN-BSN Completion Online Information Session. Thank you for taking the time out of your day to participate.

 

Kylie DeHaven: My name is Kylie [De-Haven 00:00:15], and I will be your moderator for today. Before we begin, I have a few logistics that I want to cover. First, you are in listen-only mode, so the presentation is being broadcast through your speakers to avoid any background noise. Second, please feel free to ask questions at any time. You can do so by typing into the Q&A box at the left side of your screen. You can do this at any time throughout the session. If we do not get to your question today an enrollment advisor will follow-up with you. Third, you can watch this presentation on demand at any time using the same link you used to register. We will also follow-up with an email after the presentation.

 

Kylie DeHaven: What we will cover. On today’s agenda we will introduce the centers, then talk a little bit about Maryville, and who we are, and we’ll give a lot of information about the RN-BSN program as well as the student support services, admissions requirements and tuition, and then we’ll have a Q&A session to close out the webinar.

 

Kylie DeHaven: First, let’s meet our team. Today, we have with us Dr. Bonnie Stegman, Assistant Professor of Nursing at the Catherine McAuley School of Nursing at Maryville, she is an alumni of the program, and is currently the program coordinator for the RN-BSN.

 

Dr. Stegman:  This is Dr. Stegman, hi, I just wanted to welcome to you and I’ll be speaking a little bit more about the program in a bit. Thanks for joining us today.

 

Kylie DeHaven:   Thank you.

 

Kylie DeHaven:  Today, we also have with us Senior Enrollment Advisor, Karen Tucci.

 

Karen Tucci: Good afternoon everyone, thanks so much for being on the call with us today we’re looking for a very informative session for all of you. Thanks again.

 

Kylie DeHaven: To get started, I will let Karen kick us off with a little bit more information about Maryville.

 

Karen Tucci: Sounds good Kylie, thank you. Once again, hello everyone. Thanks for joining our webinar today. My name is Karen Tucci and I am a senior enrollment advisor here. Just a little bit about my background, I do hold a bachelor’s degree in sociology and a Master’s degree in higher education.

 

Karen Tucci: Now, I’d like to tell you a little bit more about Maryville University. We are located in St. Louis, we were founded in 1872, we are ranked as a top private school by US News and World Report and Kiplinger’s. We are an Apple distinguished school, we are digital world initiative. We’re ranked among America’s Top Colleges by Forbes in 2017. We are accredited by the Higher Learning Commission, we are also credited by The Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education. We have numerous corporate partnerships. We do have some enrollment details for you: we do have over 6800 students, 90 degrees at the undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral levels, we have a diverse student body representing 50 states and 54 countries.

 

Kylie DeHaven: Now, we will kick it over to Dr. Stegman to talk more about the RN to BSN program.

 

Dr. Stegman: Hi, this is Dr. Bonnie Stegman and I just wanted to let you know a little bit too about my background. As was said earlier, I am an alum of the RN-BSN program. I participated when it was in the weekend evening college, so it was in the classroom every other weekend, which worked well as a nurse. You worked weekends, so we were off every other weekend, so when I was off I was able to continue my education. It was at an off-campus site, which was right down the street from where I worked, so it worked out very well, and I’ve been happy with the program, and was excited to be able to get this position where I’m not only the coordinator, but I do teach in the program, and I really do love it.

 

Dr. Stegman: Why take your RN to BSN at Maryville? There’s a lot of reasons. I think you will be very happy, but it is completely online, and there is not a time when you are required to come to the campus. However, that doesn’t mean you aren’t welcome. If you live in the area, or even if you don’t feel free to visit us. You can contact me if you want more of a formal visit. I’d be happy to show you around, show you the library, the Walker Hall which is a beautiful health professions building. I would very much appreciate if you want to come in I’ll help you.

 

Dr. Stegman: There’s no application fee to apply so you don’t have to worry about having money up front. The program itself can be completed in three semesters, but you don’t have to do it that quickly, so if you want to stretch it out that’s perfectly fine. We do have a lot of students that take maybe just one nursing course every eight weeks, and it can bring it out to maybe five or six semesters, or longer depending on how your life issues are happening. As we know, most of our students are working adults, and have families, and other things competing for their time, so we’re very aware of that. We will work with you to make the schedule work with your schedule. We do take eligible transfer credits, so if you’ve already completed all of your gen eds that goes to a transfer that will be talked about a little bit more later in the program. Next.

 

Dr. Stegman: I’m sure you’re aware that there has been a call and research has shown that patient outcomes are better with nurses that have a bachelor’s degree, and the call has been to try to get that goal of having a larger percentage of nurses with their bachelor’s degree. This also leads to having the ability to move up to may be to a manager position and on, for most hospitals do want that bachelor’s degree. Not saying that your previous education or experience is not worth it, but as I said this broadens your knowledge, and makes you a more attractive candidate for those positions.

 

Dr. Stegman:  As you can see on the slide, some of the settings that you could do and their average salaries are quite attractive, so even at that standpoint it would enhance your ability to qualify for those positions. There, again, as a nurse we do want to encourage that lifelong learning and just the ability to gain more knowledge.

 

Dr. Stegman: Just a little bit about what the program looks like, and we’ll talk in more detail later, but right now as I’ve said our philosophy of the program is that most of you will be working adults, sometimes with those families. You’re working towards increasing your knowledge, and maybe to move into a new or expanded role, so this program is designed for those of you that have either have an associate or diploma and are registered nurses, so you do have to have a nursing license. You have to be currently licensed to take this program.

 

Dr. Stegman:  During the program you will work with expert faculty on research, and you will complete a public-health capstone project, and I’ll talk a little bit about that more later. The important point here is that faculty in this program are all very active in their practices, and in teaching, and want to make sure that you succeed.

 

Dr. Stegman: You can immediately apply everything that you’re learning to your work challenges, work-related challenges. In your practice all of these principles will translate right away. I do teach Leadership, and so a lot of those practice assignments are very connected to what you’re doing at work. We will have classes that will help you with your assessment skills, your patient assessment skills. We realize that you are working nurses, and so you are doing patient assessments, but these are just brush up, and enhancing those skills. I think you will like our individual assessment course, which has some really good online concept labs, which help you with the breath sounds, heart sounds, and those kinds of things.

 

Dr. Stegman:  Again, like I said, all the faculty are very experienced, and some of them are still even practicing currently in different areas at hospitals, and in other facilities. We are committed to your success, and so we want to make sure that you are successful, and we’ll help you to facilitate your learning. We want you to succeed.

 

Dr. Stegman:  Just a little bit about the curriculum. It’s 129 credit hours in order to get your bachelor of science degree. When we validate that you have your current RN license you are immediately awarded 40 credit hours, so that’s a good chunk right there. There’s 25 credit hours in nursing courses that you need to take. There are 64 credits of non-nursing courses. Now, a lot of those you’ll probably already have, most students come in with most of those because of being in an associates or a diploma program, so you’ve already completed those hours. Like I said, we will evaluate your transcripts, and make sure we transfer as much as we can into that area. I think, we’ll talk a little bit more about that later.

 

Dr. Stegman:  One thing is that the last 30 credits that you take must be at the Maryville, so you have 25 hours in the nursing courses that you will be taking, which leaves another 5 credits. Typically, what most students do is they may need a humanities or a stats course, and if you take those two courses here that will qualify, but there aren’t specific courses that you need to take for those two hours. You will get an individualized plan and talk more about that later.

 

Dr. Stegman: I wanted to just go over it to give you an idea of the courses that you will be taking. If you look on here the 307 Transition to Professional Nursing, that is your first nursing course that you would take. It is a prerequisite or a co-requisite to all of the other courses, so you could either take that by itself, or you could perhaps … A lot of our students take the transitions and either the individual, or family assessment at the same time as a co-requisite. Or you could take it later on, but you do have to have 307 as your first nursing course.

 

Dr. Stegman: Then, as you can see, we have a research course, individual assessment, family assessment, nursing informatics which as we all know today is very important not only with your electronic medical records, but also with research, knowing how to use the web, how you interact with patients, and families, and so this course goes into all of those things. The ethical questions that might come up too on the Internet.

 

Dr. Stegman: Then, Leadership typically you take Leadership and the Public-Health Capstone toward the end of the program, but for Leadership it’s not necessarily required that you take it later. You might take it earlier in the program. Again, you notice it’s Leadership and not Management, and that’s because that it’s truly a leadership course. You don’t necessarily have to be a manager to be a leader, and so we want to encourage all of our nurses to be those leaders.

 

Dr. Stegman: You also would take one nursing elective. At this time we have two courses you can pick from: Genetics and End of Life. I will let you know Genetics is an interprofessional education course, so that means not only are there nursing students in there, but there may be physical therapy students, occupational therapy students, and other health professions in that course, which gives it a nice blending of how we interact with others in the profession. Then, of course the End of Life, so you would pick one of those.

 

Dr. Stegman: Then, the Public-Health Capstone that is the only course that is 16 weeks long, all the other courses are 8 weeks. The reason that end class is 16 weeks is because you will need to prepare, and then implement a project, so this gives you that extra time to be able to fit all that in. The coursework itself you may not have active discussions every week it may be every other week, so there may be a couple weeks in between in order for you to set up your project. Typically, a lot of the projects they are going to be in the community, so you will find a community, you’ll do an assessment on that community, you find out what are some of its what are some of the health needs in that community, and then you will design and implement a project that would address one of those areas of concern.

 

Dr. Stegman: The course sequences we do have an option starting in the Fall, Spring, and Summer. Typically, the rotation of how you would take these would be the transition course, individual assessment, and family assessment in the first semester. The second semester would be nursing informatics, then the research, and then your nursing elective either Genetics or End of Life. Then, the final semester would be Leadership and Public Health.

 

Dr. Stegman:  Now, as I’ve said before, if you wanted to be finished in three semesters that’s the rotation you would do although you could not necessarily have to take exactly those courses in that order. You might need to take something at a different time depending on your schedule and when it’s offered. Again, as I said, we can stretch that out so it doesn’t necessarily have to be three semesters long. You could do to two nursing courses a semester, so that’s one every eight weeks and therefore that would bring it out to four or five semesters. You could even do it longer if you needed to.

 

Kylie DeHaven: Thank you so much Dr. Stegman for all of that information. We’re going to pass it back to Karen to talk a little bit more about the online learning experience.

 

Karen Tucci:  Thank you. The Maryville online learning experience, we try to make it very easy for everyone. There are engaging interactive experiences, small class sizes allow for networking and development of relationships with fellow students and distinguished faculty. It’s fully asynchronous learning environment, which offers flexibility for working professionals. The program is available to you 24 hours a day 7 days a week to login at any time. We adapt to your personal schedule within structured timelines, the access is definitely at your convenience. There is a learning management system, the course information is at your fingertips at all times. There are flexible options for mobile learning, meaning that you can view the course content from any device.

 

Karen Tucci: Then, I’ll give you a bit of information in regards to the support here at Maryville University. First of all, it is very flexible you’re online, there is some face-to-face, or blended, whatever really you feel that you need. The pace, as Dr. Stegman said, each session is eight weeks. We are a very transfer friendly university, we’ll take a look at your transfer credits, and devise a degree plan for you. We do have a student support center here that is available to you, it’s a division of Student Success. You also have access to other resources. We do have a career center and professional development that is available to you.

 

Karen Tucci:  In order to apply to the program, I’ll go over some of the admissions requirements, you do need to complete an online application and that online application is free. There is no fee to apply, it’ll take you about 10 to 15 minutes to fill it out. Official academic transcripts from all previous attended institutions that can either be emailed to us or mailed to us. For the bachelor of science in nursing you do need a cumulative GPA of 2.5 on a 4.0 scale from an accredited institution. You do need a valid RN license, and at least 30 credits of this degree must be taken with Maryville University.

 

Karen Tucci: In regards to the tuition the cost per credit hour is $500, you also may be working with one of our corporate partners and a discount may apply. There is a one-time fee per semester of $350 that includes graduation fees, unlimited transcripts, access to the writing center, everything that’s included basically while you’re a student. Financial aid is available, and corporate discounts may apply, you can ask your enrollment advisor about that.

 

Karen Tucci: If you are ready to apply or if you even have further questions the next thing to do would be to schedule an appointment with your enrollment advisor to go over your course evaluation, financial aid, the application steps, the admission process. Once your application is complete and all of your documents are included with your file you will receive an admission decision from the academic department.

 

Kylie DeHaven: Thank you so much Dr. Stegman and Karen. This is the beginning of our question and answer portion, so please if you haven’t already submitted your question do so now, or at any time. To get started the first question that we have is about transfer credits, and this is for Karen. Can you just give us a little bit more information about the transfer credits?

 

Karen Tucci: Sure, absolutely. What we’d like to do is receive your official transcripts, from your previous institution that is regionally accredited, and then what we do from that point is we will develop for you a degree plan that will state exactly what you need to take here, and your enrollment advisor will discuss what you need to take, and how long it will take, so then you’ll have an idea of basically how long you will be in school, and then you also have an idea of exactly how much it will cost. We definitely will take a look at all official transcripts, and provide you with a degree plan that can be discussed with your enrollment advisor.

 

Kylie DeHaven: Thank you. Dr. Stegman, this one is for you. How intense is the workload? As a working nurse, how much time do I need to be able to dedicate to my studies per week?

 

Dr. Stegman:  Again, it’s going to vary depending on how many courses you’re taking at a time. A good indicator is that you will need to devote at least roughly about … When you think of normally a three credit hour course you’re in the course for three hours, normally you would be in the classroom. Figure about three hours that week, and then you will need to add in time for preparation, and for any quizzes, doing your papers, and then if there’s any reading, the readings to be done.

 

Dr. Stegman: It’s going to depend on your schedule, but one thing that’s really nice about this is that, for the most part, the only time requirements are that you will have specific due dates for things, but you won’t physically have to be somewhere, so that three hours, or six hours depending on how long you’re doing, maybe 10 hours will be over when you can do it. You could pick it up in chunks, and you can make sure that you’re getting your work done. Again, it’s going to be on your timeframe. All of my students have been able to manage working, families, and doing the program. Just don’t forget that the faculty are here to help you, so that if you’re running into any problems we encourage students to contact us right away, and we can help you work around any issues that you have.

 

Dr. Stegman:  Again, it’s just like any coursework you will need to devote time to it, it is going to impact your schedules, but if you work when you can that’s nice having 24 access to your courses, you can post at any time of day or night. I have students that do their work at 1 or 2 o’clock in the morning, some students work those night shifts, so they might have a break and be able to get on the discussion board, and do their discussion at that time. It’s very flexible. Yes, you will have to put in some work and some hours, but it is very manageable.

 

Kylie DeHaven: Thank you so much for that response. For this next question we will go to Karen. Do I need to come to campus for any reason?

 

Karen Tucci: That’s a great question. No, you do not need to come to campus although we definitely would welcome you if you’d like to come by. You can even go for a tour, but one of the best reason to come to campus is for graduation, keep that in mind that we’d love to see you at graduation. Obviously, you can bring friends and family. That’s what you’ve worked so hard for, so it would be great if we could see you at graduation, but to answer your question no, there is no reason that you have to come to campus.

 

Kylie DeHaven: This next question is for Dr. Stegman. How often do students have live dialogue with instructors?

 

Dr. Stegman: That varies from instructor to instructor. Typically, we work with you initially when we started the program we scheduled live office hours where we would have a video chat, but it didn’t work very well because students had so many scheduled differences. It ended up being a recorded session for a lot of people, and that wasn’t the intent of that.

 

Dr. Stegman: Some instructors do schedule those hours for you to do live chats. I like to reach out to my students and see what their preference is. A lot of my students, we communicate via email, messaging, and Canvas, or by phone. Some students do come into the campus, and we chat in my office. Those are students that live locally, and so it’s convenient for them. Yes, we can set up those live video chats where we all see each other, and we can talk to each other, and that works very well. I have set those up too.

 

Dr. Stegman: Again, sometimes that’s a timing issue for everyone that isn’t able to do that. Sometimes people set up that window where at any time during say an hour or two you can jump in, and do a chat, a live video chat. Again, email works, phone calls work, visiting the campus works. I do offer my cell phone if people have an emergency they need to talk about you could also text me. That’s going to depend on each individual faculty member, but we do always offer multiple ways of communication because that’s so important to keep that dialog going especially to know what you’re dealing with, and what issues you’re having, and what problems we need to help you with.

 

Kylie DeHaven: Thank you so much Dr. Stegman. For the next question we’ll go to Karen. The question is, can I get electronic versions of my textbooks?

 

Karen Tucci:  That’s a great question. Some books yes, you most likely will be able to get electronic versions otherwise you can order them from our Maryville bookstore. You also could order them from Amazon, or there’s another website called Chegg, but if the book is available electronically you’re more than welcome to get it that way. It’s just whatever you prefer.

 

Karen Tucci:  Some people prefer having a hard copy book in their hand, some people prefer to look on their Kindle, and read their book if necessary. One way that I was able to get my books when I was going to school if I actually rented my books off of Amazon for some of the books that I didn’t want to keep. It’s a little bit of a cost savings, but then the ones that I wanted to keep I actually purchased. To answer your question, of course you can get them electronically if it is available. Thank you.

 

Kylie DeHaven:  Thank you Karen. For this next question we will go to Bonnie. Dr. Stegman, excuse me. How technically savvy do we need to be successful in this online program?

 

Dr. Stegman:  Obviously, since it is a computer program and it is online you will need to be able to operate. If you can get on the Internet, if you can get on Facebook you should have no problem with this. The course system is Canvas and it’s very user-friendly, it’s a lot of clicking on, all the buttons are there. If you can click on a button you can get into anything that you need to in the course.

 

Dr. Stegman: Obviously, we are going to try to develop your skills during this program because as a nurse you need to have that technology skills in order to branch out and make sure you’re getting the latest research, to know what’s going on in your practice, and as you know your electronic health record is all computer-based. I think most people come in very versed in how to use the system, and then as we go through the program you do learn a little bit more of how to use other applications.

 

Dr. Stegman:  You don’t have to be a geek like on Best Buy they have their Geek Squad, but it is an online program, so there is some ability of being able to do that. Again, as I said, if you can use your electronic health record at work, if you know how to use the Internet, and email, and those kinds of things you’ll be just fine.

 

Dr. Stegman: There’s always help. We have a help desk that’s available to help you, so if you ever have any technical problems that’s listed, the phone number, and you can chat with them, and they will very much help you with any technical issues you may have.

 

Kylie DeHaven: Thank you so much Dr. Stegman, and thank you Karen for all of those great responses. Thank you to everyone who submitted a question. This will close the Q&A portion of our webinar. If anyone has any more questions that they think of later please do not hesitate to reach out to us.

 

Kylie DeHaven: If you look at the resources section on the left side of your screen you’ll see several different resources available to you. You can schedule an appointment with an advisor to go over the program, or any questions you may have, you can find more information on our website. You can look at the application checklist, or you can start your application right now.

 

Kylie DeHaven: We do want to call your attention to the Fall application deadline, this is on Monday, July 16th, so go ahead and get started now so we can get you enrolled. Thank you again for taking the time out of your day to join us. Thank you again to our presenters, Dr. Stegman and Karen, we hope that you found this webinar useful, and we look forward to speaking to you soon. Have a great day everyone.