Kettering College Transfer Program Welcomes Canadian Cohorts
Kettering College welcomes international students every year to study and enrich our campus with diversity, and we continue to look for ways to build these relationships across borders. To help support this vision, in 2018 Kettering College joined a transfer partnership with Burman University, a Seventh-day Adventist university in Lacombe, Alberta, Canada.
Students in the pre-nursing program at Burman complete their prerequisites on that campus for three semesters and transfer here to Kettering College for two years of full-time study. They first earn a certificate in health sciences before continuing their nursing core curriculum and clinicals at Kettering College.
Once students graduate, they are able to become a licensed nurse in either Canada or the States. Both locations are experiencing a shortage of nurses with a forecasted growth in job demand in the coming years.
Tiniel Parredon-Pelley, Enrollment Manager at Burman, says the program has proven to be beneficial to Burman students. She notes, “Students get the chance to experience two different cultures without having to travel too far from home. This allows a nice transition for our Canadian students to stay close to home for the first year before they transition into university life away from home.”
Parredon adds the opportunity to affordably obtain an American degree is valuable to students with an interest in being a travel nurse or having the option of working in either location thanks to the international partnership between Burman University and Kettering College.
Since the program’s inception, nearly 15 nursing students have transferred from Burman University to Kettering College, and the first cohort of students graduated in December 2022. Current Burman transfer students work with Dr. Adelaide Durkin who advises all international nursing students to make sure they’re on track and getting all their questions answered about their classes or anything that arises from being in a different country.
Kettering College nursing student, Anya Barrett, transferred here from Burman and will be graduating this December. She is an example of a student who has utilized this international pipeline to enhance her education. She says, “I know that when I graduate that I will be a competent nurse because of the way both schools structured their programs. Everyone here is striving to do their best academically, and I believe it pushes me also to do my best.”
Trying new things entails a learning curve, and this international partnership is no different. Jessica Beans, Associate Dean of Enrollment and Communication at Kettering College, continues to work with others here and at Burman to improve the new program and streamline the processes. She says, “We know transitioning between a university in Canada and the United States can be complicated with the international student paperwork, but we are striving to improve this process, as we continue to learn how to best support our Canadian students coming to Ohio through this partnership.”
Since the onset, both institutions have created the innovative program without a roadmap, learning as the years have progressed. There are now monthly meetings between both institutions that include departments such as admissions, records, and enrollment to continue to make the transfer process more efficient and maintain lines of communication for best practices.
One recent addition to the program has been to focus on introducing current pre-nursing students at Burman to our Kettering College team via a virtual information session this March. Beans says, “This early introduction is an effort to connect Burman students sooner than ever before, so that they can be sure to finish up strong at Burman and know who to work with at Kettering College long before the process starts.”
Beans points out the virtual information session will become a yearly event, so each cohort of Burman students is able to meet our staff in the spring to prepare for their transition to Ohio in January, being able to put faces with names and a deeper understanding of the entire process.
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