Despite the quiet atmosphere of Stafford Hall, there are big shifts in academic programming taking place on the second floor. 

Upon opening the double doors at the top of the stairs, this became obvious. The second floor hosts a bustling nursing program, classroom and laboratories busy with student and faculty activity. 

Helen Papeika, chair and program director for Castleton’s nursing program, was enthusiastic to chat about the program among the shelves of equipment and boxes of education materials overflowing in classrooms.

“Growing is complicated,” Papeika explained, “We’re going through the multiple steps of accreditation, and the state has strict guidelines they want us to follow.” 

She also described how challenging it is to push and pull with the state over changing their rules of accreditation while conforming to the national standard. It is a necessary step in expanding, though, primarily for hiring new employees.

Accreditation is a process every nursing school must endure. Caitlin Stover, dean for the School of Nursing, was happy to describe what accreditation was in relation to VTSU. 

“The purpose of accreditation is to ensure that you’re delivering a high quality and effective educational product to your students. It’s not just a matter of filling seats, but instead filling seats with successful students, and retaining them,” she said. 

In reference to the staff, accreditation asks for nurses to meet strict requirements before they can teach. 

“The accreditors want your faculty experienced with the right credentials for the areas where they are teaching,” Stover said. 

On top of these trials, finding new educators for her department has proven to be a challenge. 

“Obviously a nationwide nursing shortage is happening, and by default we’re having a nursing educator shortage because of that,” Stover said. 

This shortage of nursing educators in Vermont follows the trend of other labor shortages in the state. Nurses in particular have the option to take positions nationwide after completing their education. 

“It’s very hard to get nursing faculty. The pay is not consistent with the industry standard for nurses, and convincing someone to leave their nursing job at the bedside to come and teach for half is a hard sell,” said Jessica Beaty, a nursing educator on the Castleton campus. 

Regardless of this, Beaty described how the department has been humming with more activity than ever after the merger. 

“The LPN students and the ADN students that were attending classes at VTC are on this campus now, expanding in that we have more nursing students under the four programs at Castleton, where there used to be only two,” she continued.

Alexis Locke, a professor and member of the nursing staff, has been helping manage this shift with over eight years of nursing experience. 

“With the merger, we’re definitely finding ways to be creative and work together, but it is going to take time to figure it out,” Locke said. “The students are engaged and happy to be here. The energy is there, and the drive for nursing and people wanting to be nurses is huge.” 

VTSU Vice President of Admissions Maurice Ouimet also helped connect the dots of the nursing momentum. 

“There is a positive trend on the front end of enrollment, mostly undergrad, but we’re definitely seeing an uptick in admissions for the nursing programs,” Ouimet said.

The expansion of Castleton’s nursing programs may supplement the loss of other academic programming on the campus, as Richard Reardon briefly explained while walking through the quiet halls of Stafford’s ground floor. 

Reardon, the director for the School of Education, whose office is on the first floor, recommended that this reporter should “go upstairs to see what’s really happening in Stafford,” furthering that “the nursing school has been growing up there.”

“Through the transformation, a lot of programs have gone under and consolidated across the campuses, allowing more room for us to grow,” said Pam Alexander, dean’s assistant for the School of Nursing. 

The theme of consolidation has been weighing heavily on the limited space on campus.

“When you start consolidating and bringing the nursing programs from other campuses here, it definitely does push out our walls,” Alexander said. 

Through the complexities of merging programs and finding new educators, the faculty and staff work to maintain positive energy and a focus on the future. 

 “Even though the transition has been rough, one of the things that makes me feel good and that keeps me wanting to come in is the people that I work with. I can see clearly without question that these are people who are very committed to making this program work,” Alexander said.