For the fifth consecutive year, the School of Nursing at California State University, Stanislaus has received funding through the Song-Brown Registered Nurses Education Program. The grant, in the amount of $240,000 will support the enrollment of additional students into the university’s nursing program.

CSU Stanislaus was one out of two schools to receive the full funding amount out of 18 applicants.

"Our program excels in these criteria year after year," said Debbie Tavernier, director of the CSU Stanislaus School of Nursing. "It is important for us to graduate nurses who match our community's diversity, and for them to pass the NCLEX at the rate they do and consistently find employment in our region is phenomenal."

Due to state budget cuts, the CSU Stanislaus School of Nursing was forced to decrease the number of admissions per year from 80 to 50 in 2008. The Song-Brown funding, which the university first received in 2009 and has received every year since, has allowed the school to restore 10 of those spots for a total of 60 students per year.
This round of funding will also be used to provide one-on-one mentoring for students, to support the school's nursing Boot Camp program, to support nursing faculty and staff, and to fund a new composition course for first-year, pre-nursing students. The course, an innovative collaboration between the School of Nursing and the university's Writing Program, will be developed in collaboration with nursing faculty and will be designed to better prepare nursing students for reading, writing and analyzing material both on tests and throughout their careers.