Indiana Wesleyan University is offering accelerated nursing programs where students may be able to graduate in as little as fourteen months.
“I found out in the middle of my junior year that I wanted to switch to nursing,” accelerated nursing student Olivia Darnell said.
Darnell was previously studying occupational therapy at IWU but said she enjoyed the patient interactions and nursing aspects of being in a hospital more than the occupational therapy side.
“They said if I switched it would take four years–additional years–to complete the program,” Darnell said. “But if I graduated and joined the TTN (Transition to Nursing) it would only take 14 months.”
TTN is just one track students can take to finish their nursing program early. 3+1 is aimed at students who have had three years of college at another university and want to add a nursing degree. Accelerated Nursing is for students who come in with a significant amount of general education (GenEd) classes already done.
Division Chair Heather Brady said the fast track program is aimed at students who want to finish the program quickly and may have some college credits completed already.
“Looking at the four year program, you’re looking at all the GenEds too, and so the fast track or the accelerated track you’re really looking at the nursing classes” Brady said. “We don’t have to think about the GenEds because typically they have those done.”
Brady said that taking that many classes at the same time makes the program very challenging.
Accelerated nursing students are required to score higher on entrance exams than students in the four-year program because of the added challenge of completing the program early.
Abby Flenar, the director of the accelerated program said that students in the program can also expect to not have a typical college experience.
“They will give up some time of having a college life so that’s something that we present too” Flenar said. “We also discuss athletics and any other extracurriculars because that does make it extra challenging, really sometimes very difficult to be able to do both.”
Darnell is in the marching band in addition to being an accelerated student.
“I’ve been able to balance pretty well, but this program is a huge time commitment,” Darnell said.
Currently there are eight students in all forms of accelerated nursing, but Brady said that the number is constantly changing as students graduate and new students enter the accelerated track.
