In This Issue
- Good Seats Available Partnering to build arenas, stadiums
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From Comptroller
Susan Combs - TEXpansion/
New Texas Innovator - Shining a Light on Transparency
Leadership Circle recognizes efforts 
Partnering
for Impact:
Sharing services improves efficiency- Regional
Approach
Pays Off
Both sides of border offer prospects for Eagle Pass - No Borders Here
Texarkana partners across boundary lines - Nursing Head Start
High school programs pave way to health care careers - Neighbors Working Together
Communities draw on advice, experience of others - Soaring to Success for Texans
Tarrant County College gives aerospace industry a lift
Web Exclusive
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Taking the High Ground
Regional attitude is ‘win for one is win for all’
denotes expanded online or Web-exclusive content.
Hospital Workforce Professional Options
Strategies for Success
Above: Eldorado High School nursing students gain valuable experience at Lillian M. Hudspeth Memorial Hospital in Sonora.
Health Career Options
Medical Assistant –
Technological advancements and the growing number of aging Americans who need medical treatment are contributing to the demand for medical assistants who work in doctors’ offices and outpatient care facilities. Requires 42 credit hours.
Vocational Nurse –
The 12-month certificate program that offers college credit is designed to prepare students to perform direct patient care under the supervision of a registered nurse and/or physician.
Registered Nurse –
The Registered Nursing (RN) program is a two-year Associate Degree Nursing (ADN) Program that offers college credit. Upon completion, students will apply to take the State Board Examination to become an RN.
Source: Howard College
Every Chance Help
Seven growing career areas, including the health care field, are being targeted for scholarship and training grants under the Comptroller’s Every Chance Funds program. Howard College was awarded $101,000 for career and technical scholarships in fall 2009, a share of the $2.5 million distributed among 54 colleges in the inaugural round of funding.
Learn about the three funds at EveryChanceEveryTexan.org.
Nursing Head Start
High school programs pave way to health care careers
Sonora’s Lillian M. Hudspeth Memorial Hospital works with area high schools to train students for future medical careers.
Martha Alvarez hates desks. She hates being behind them, to be more specific. So as a high school junior in 1994, choosing between a potential future in accounting and one in nursing, she tried classes in both at Sonora High.
Accounting was satisfying – but it involved desks. “Nursing is challenging,” she says.
Now the chief nursing officer at Lillian M. Hudspeth Memorial Hospital in Sonora, Alvarez is one of the many success stories from the high school vocational health science programs thriving in west central Texas.
In these programs, most students are exposed to a variety of health care occupations as juniors and have a chance to become certified nursing assistants (CNA) as seniors.
“If they take it with us, you’re looking at a cost of $285,” says Donna Rutledge, Vocational Nursing program director at Howard College in San Angelo. “When it’s with the high school program it’s free, and the schools often even pay for the exam.”
In 2008, the average salary for nurse aides was $20,940 in Texas.
The high school vocational nursing program has its roots in Tech Prep, a federal program created in 1990 and designed to support vocational education in high schools. The course was established in a smattering of local school districts with direction from Howard College.
Four have prospered – San Angelo, Sonora, Schleicher County and Ozona.
Susie Richters, who helms the program at Eldorado High School in Schleicher County, says the students exceed the state-certification minimums of 51 class hours and 24 clinical hours, and that the Eldorado program has a certification rate of almost 100 percent.
Not all go into nursing, but they have the opportunity.
“That’s the thing about the medical field,” she says. “There are always jobs.”
Hudspeth Hospital has started a program that takes advantage of the students’ head starts, offering to pay their tuition in college undergraduate health care programs in exchange for them returning to practice at the hospital after graduation.
“For example, an RN goes to school for two years, paid for, and then gives us three years of service,” says Keith Butler, hospital CEO. “We want to foster that opportunity.”
Ada Castilleja, who directs the Sonora program, remembers the students who have used the CNA certification as a springboard to bigger things.
“One texted me to tell me that she’s now an RN,” Castilleja says. “She wrote, ‘You’re the one who started it. I wanted you to know.’ That sure gives you a great feeling.” TR