Today's nurses face more opportunities and challenges than ever before. And with the country facing what experts call a "nursing shortage of crisis proportions," nurses can look forward to a future of exciting professional choice.

Besides working in hospitals, they can enter biotechnology and pharmaceutical fields, which often employ nurses as clinical research associates to manage product tests. Medical equipment manufacturers hire nurses to market their products. And patient care has moved to non-traditional sites like schools, homeless shelters, domestic violence shelters, and other community agencies.

A nursing career is dynamic, always presenting new opportunities to learn. In the nursing profession, education never stops -- and college graduation is just another beginning.

That's why the nursing program at Southern emphasizes a basic liberal arts education -- communication, analysis, and the sciences -- backed up by solid preparation for generalists. Students learn to manage diverse clients in diverse settings, preparing for careers that might take them to pediatrics, oncology, psychiatry, or cardiac care.

In the classroom, students learn not only patient care; they also explore the role nurses play in promoting and maintaining health, theories of management and leadership, and legal and ethical issues facing today's nurse.

Classroom assignments address real community issues. For example, students recently developed a program on how to make homes safe for children, which was aired on Connecticut Public Television. Others designed an interactive Web site to support diabetic teenagers, and still others investigated how two-way video phones can improve care for homebound patients. These students acquired the broad perspective necessary to be effective caregivers in an always-changing healthcare field.

Hands-on experience is essential to nursing education. First, students work in Southern's interactive nursing lab developing basic skills like health assessment, dressing wounds, suctioning, and administering medications. Laboratory experiences are then augmented with direct patient care opportunities in a variety of settings, including hospitals and community agencies.