The University of Texas at El Paso’s School of Nursing has been named the No. 1 school in the United States in awarding bachelor’s degrees to Hispanics, according to the El Paso Times.
“We are setting the bar now in educating Hispanic nurses,” Elias Provencio-Vasquez, RN, PhD, FAAN, FAANP, the school’s dean, said in the article. “That gives us the spotlight that we are the experts in educating a diverse student body.”
Of the 324 nurses who graduated from the School of Nursing in 2010, 228, or 70%, were Hispanic.
“Other schools across the country are looking at us as a model of education for bilingual and bicultural nurses,” Provencio-Vasquez said in the article. “Our nursing students are being recruited by other cities across the country who have an influx of immigrants that are Hispanic.”
According to Provencio-Vasquez, 60% of RNs who practice in El Paso are UTEP graduates. “When I first got here, I went out and met every chief nursing officer, every CEO of every hospital because I wanted to make sure we were educating our students so that they wanted to hire them,” said Provencio-Vasquez. •
Eliaz Provencio-Vasquez, RN • UTEP Hispanic nursing students in action • University of Texas at El Paso UTEP Hispanic nursing students care for patience
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