BGSU Firelands’ Office of Nursing has given students another option when it comes to getting their nursing degree.

The Firelands campus, which is located in Huron, Ohio, has reached an agreement with Firelands Regional Medical Center’s School of Nursing, located in Sandusky, Ohio.

Through the plan, students will take their support classes at BGSU Firelands and their nursing courses at Firelands Regional Medical Center.

The three-year program will begin this upcoming fall semester and students will receive a diploma in nursing from Firelands Regional Medical Center and an associate’s degree of science in nursing from BGSU Firelands.

Prior to this agreement, students taking nursing classes at Firelands Regional Medical Center in Sandusky took their support classes through Lourdes College.

Holly Price, director of the Firelands Regional Medical Center School of Nursing, said the program with Lourdes would only continue for two more years, which is when the most recent class in the program will be graduating.

Firelands Regional Medical Center decided to discontinue their partnership with Lourdes, whose faculty traveled to their campus to teach the courses, because of the distance between the campus and rising costs, Price said.

‘We have been working with Lourdes College and since they are a private school their tuition was getting higher,’ Price said. ‘Another problem was that their campus is in Sylvania, which is about an hour and 15 minutes from us, so students couldn’t use their services.’

This new program will help students save money and is great for students tied to the Sandusky area, said Ellen Naderer, nursing coordinator at BGSU Firelands.

There are three other programs at BGSU Firelands that students can enroll in to get a nursing degree.

The first option is the bachelor of science in nursing, which is a four-year program that includes two years of support classes at BGSU Firelands and two years at the University of Toledo’s College of Nursing.

Registered nurses interested in going back to get their bachelor of science in nursing can also enroll in BGSU Firelands’ RN to BSN Completion Program.

The program allows registered nurses to take all their nursing courses online, which makes it easier for them because of their busy schedules, Naderer said.

Students can also apply for an associate’s degree in nursing, which is a three-year program.

The support classes for the degree are taken through BGSU Firelands and the nursing classes are taken through Lorain Community College, whose faculty teaches the courses on the BGSU Firelands campus.

The Sandusky region has a lot of opportunities for nursing, Naderer said.

‘This is a pretty exciting place to be for nursing,’ Naderer said. ‘Usually you see all these options in a bigger city and we are not a big city.’