Institutional Information

Catholic Identity

Mount Carmel College of Nursing, a private Catholic college, has developed several commitments to promote its identity as a Catholic institution of higher education. These commitments include:

• Be faithful to the teachings of the Catholic Church.
• Serve others, particularly the poor, underprivileged, and vulnerable members of society.
• Witness the Catholic faith and Judeo Christian values through Catholic administrators, faculty, and staff, and through those of other faith traditions.
• Integrate Catholic values into the curriculum; assure faculty and student awareness of the convictions of Catholic health care.
• Create a campus culture and environment that is expressive and supportive of a Catholic way of life.

Mission Statement

Mount Carmel College of Nursing, a collaborative learning community, serving in the spirit of the Catholic tradition, offers excellent science-based education in nursing and allied health in a caring, respectful, and socially responsible environment.

Core Values

• Academic Excellence
• Respect
• Compassion
• Social Responsibility

Goals

• Offer educational opportunities for holistic development of outstanding health care professionals
• Respect diverse spiritual and cultural values
• Serve the community

Expected Outcomes

• The graduates demonstrate competence for practice.
• The faculty demonstrates excellence in teaching, service, scholarship, and practice.
• The teaching-learning process occurs in an environment supportive of diversity.
• The faculty, students, and staff provide quality health care programs and services to communities.

College Profile

At Mount Carmel College of Nursing, students are able to take advantage of small classes, one-on-one instruction, the opportunity to form lifelong bonds with classmates, and personal contact with faculty, staff, and administration. A variety of co-curricular experiences exist to enrich the college experience.

Mount Carmel’s small size also means that instructors focus on teaching. Although faculty are involved in research and other scholarly work, publishing, and clinical practice, their first commitment is to enhance students’ professional preparation with comprehensive theoretical knowledge and rich and diverse clinical learning experiences.

Mount Carmel College of Nursing is a subsidiary corporation of Mount Carmel Health System, whose parent is Trinity Health. The College shares a campus with Mount Carmel West, a hospital within the Mount Carmel Health System (MCHS). This affiliation with MCHS offers Mount Carmel College of Nursing students a wide variety of clinical experiences that include four acute care hospitals, community outreach programs, hospice, home health, and ambulatory care centers.

College History

Nursing education has been offered at Mount Carmel since the diploma program was established in 1903. The diploma nursing program graduated more than 4,500 nurses and established a tradition of excellence in nursing education.

In 1985, forward thinking administrators and faculty began the move from a hospital diploma nursing program to a college offering a Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN). Mount Carmel College of Nursing was formally established in 1988. The first class of students was enrolled in Fall Semester 1990.

A special track for registered nurses who wish to earn a BSN was added to the nursing program in 1996, and the Online RN-BSN Program started in Fall 2011. A Master of Science (MS) degree was initiated in Fall 2003, and a 13-month Second Degree Accelerated Program followed in Spring 2007. In Fall 2009, a satellite location for the BSN Program was launched on the campus of Fairfield Medical Center in Lancaster, Ohio. The Nursing Center for Family Health, a nurse-managed nursing center, opened in January 2011. The Clinical Skills and Simulation Center was opened Fall 2012. An online post-master’s Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) program enrolled its first students in Fall 2015.

Location

Mount Carmel College of Nursing is located west of downtown Columbus on the same campus as Mount Carmel West hospital, just north of I-70 and west of SR315, on the corner of West Town Street and South Davis Avenue. With well over a million residents in its metropolitan area, Columbus is a diverse city. Collegiate and professional sports, innovative shopping and restaurants, Broadway series productions, national concert tours, plus world-class symphony, art museum, opera and ballet companies call Columbus home. The College also operates a satellite location at Fairfield Medical Center in Lancaster, Ohio, where it offers the traditional BSN program.

Accreditation and Affiliations

Mount Carmel College of Nursing is fully accredited by The Higher Learning Commission (HLC)¹ which serves as a resource to externally evaluate the quality of College educational offerings.

The College is authorized by the Ohio Board of Regents² to grant the Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) degree (including the Fairfield Medical Center satellite location), the Master of Science (MS) degree, and the Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) degree.

The College is authorized by the Ohio Board of Nursing³ to operate/deliver the pre-licensure nursing program.

The baccalaureate nursing program and master’s programs are accredited by the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education (CCNE).⁴

The College has collaborative relationships with The Ohio State University (OSU) and Columbus State Community College (CSCC). Mount Carmel students may enroll in selected general education courses taught at either OSU or CSCC. Mount Carmel students have access to the library and testing and tutorial services offered by both of these institutions. In addition, Mount Carmel has collaborative relationships with the University of Findlay, Wilmington College, Ohio Dominican University, and Lake Erie College whereby students enrolled in these colleges can matriculate to Mount Carmel and earn a baccalaureate degree in nursing. Mount Carmel has a collaborative relationship with Ohio University-Lancaster to provide the first-year curriculum and selected general education courses for students enrolled in the BSN program at Fairfield Medical Center.

Mount Carmel College of Nursing holds membership in the following organizations:

• American Association of Colleges of Nursing
• American Association of Collegiate Registrars & Admissions Officers
• American Association of Higher Education
• Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities
• Association of Health Science Educational Consortium
• Association of Independent Colleges and Universities of Ohio
• National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities
• National League for Nursing
• Ohio Association for College Admission Counselors
• Ohio Association of College Registrars and Admissions Officers
• Ohio Council of Deans and Directors of Nursing
• Ohio League for Nursing

______________________________________

¹Higher Learning Commission, 30 North La Salle Street, Suite 2400, Chicago, IL 60602-2504, 312-263-0456, www.ncahlc.org.

²Ohio Board of Regents, 25 South Front Street, Columbus, OH 43215, 614-466-6000, www.ohiohighered.org.

³Ohio Board of Nursing, 17 South High Street, Suite 400, Columbus, OH 43215, 614-466-3947, www.nursing.ohio.gov.

⁴Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education, One DuPont Circle NW, Suite 530, Washington DC, 20036, 202-887-6791, www.aacn.nche.edu.

Assessment, Evaluation and Institutional Effectiveness

Institutional Effectiveness is an organizing term inclusive of many of the higher education practices described over the years using terms such as assessment, evaluation, and quality improvement. In the HLC’s current Criteria and Core Components for Accreditation, Institutional Effectiveness is a theme throughout the requirements but is specifically outlined in Criterion Five: Resources, Planning, and Institutional Effectiveness. Several off the standards from across the Criteria which relate directly to Institutional Effectiveness include:

• The institution develops and documents evidence of performance in its operations.
• The institution learns from its operational experience and applies that learning to improve its institutional effectiveness, capabilities, and sustainability, overall and in its component parts.
• The institution uses information on student retention, persistence, and completion of programs to make improvements as warranted by the data.
• The institution collects and analyzes information on student retention, persistence, and completion of its programs.
• The institution uses the information gained from assessment to improve student learning.
• The institution evaluates the success of its graduates.
• The institution maintains a practice of regular program reviews.
• The institution assesses achievement of the learning outcomes that it claims for its curricular and co-curricular programs.
• The planning process encompasses the institution as a whole and considers the perspectives of internal and external constituent groups.
• The institution plans on the basis of a sound understanding of its current capacity. Institutional plans anticipate the possible impact of fluctuations in the institution’s sources of revenue, such as enrollment, the economy, and state support.
• Institutional planning anticipates emerging factors, such as technology, demographic shifts, and globalization.

The standards noted above are consistent with other standards and requirements such as those outlined by the College’s specialized accreditor for nursing education programs, CCNE. These standards reflect expectations from across the higher education accreditation and regulatory landscape that institutions of higher education embrace a culture of continuous quality improvement which produces significant, verifiable results.

Institutional Effectiveness is the not the responsibility only of the faculty, a single committee, or the leadership team. An institution can only be truly effective when all of its members embrace a shared vision of operational and academic excellence.

In support of continuous quality improvement, the College has developed a Master Plan for Institutional Effectiveness (MPIE) which summarizes College goals, expected outcomes, and methods of measuring progress toward these goals. The plan is overseen by the Evaluation and Institutional Effectiveness Committee, which integrates evaluation of all aspects of the College’s academic programs and operations in support of institutional effectiveness. It is an expectation within the College that as faculty, staff, and students are called upon to engage in various aspects of the continuous quality improvement and evaluation process (including through surveys, requests for feedback or proposals, task forces, and other methods), that they contribute fully and in a timely manner.

Philosophy of Nursing

Mount Carmel College of Nursing provides educational programs in a Judeo-Christian environment which enhance the unique intellectual, moral, spiritual, and psychosocial development of the person. The faculty accepts responsibility to prepare professional nurses for theory and evidence based practice at the basic and advanced levels that reflects the values and standards of the profession.

Caring is integral to nursing, valuing the dignity and worth of persons, service to others, social justice, altruism, autonomy, and integrity. Nursing is the practice of caring behaviors founded upon the integration of general education and professional studies. Nursing involves the management of health care of individuals, families, communities, and populations. The nurse is a health care professional who enacts multifaceted roles to promote optimal health during all life experiences. Nurses work collaboratively with clients and multidisciplinary teams to design, provide, coordinate, and implement health care. They respond to the diverse and changing needs of society in the local community as well as the broader global community. Nurses are both knowledgeable and active in political, economic, and regulatory processes that influence health care practices.

Health involves the harmonious integration of all dimensions of the client; it is culturally defined, valued, and practiced. Health is a dynamic, lifelong, multidimensional process whether the client is an individual, family, community, or population. Changes in health status occur in response to the stressors and strengths of the internal and external environment. The nurse provides holistic, culturally competent caring interventions directed at assisting the client to promote health.

Baccalaureate nursing education provides the foundation for safety and quality in professional nursing practice. Through a collaborative and interactive process, the self-directed learner develops the skills of critical thinking, effective communication, holistic assessment, caregiving, and leadership for professional practice. Clinical practice, which is the essence of nursing, is augmented through nursing theory and evidence based practice. Baccalaureate nursing education encourages lifelong inquiry for professional development.

Graduate nursing education provides the foundation for specialized roles in clinical practice, education, and administration. Research, theory for advanced practice, and strategies for validating and utilizing research findings are integral to graduate study.

General Education in the Nursing Program

General education is the foundation of professional education and provides the learner with the opportunity to develop the skills of critical thinking, independent decision making, and leadership, along with value formation and openness to cultural diversity. General education integrates and bridges the disciplines. It weaves a cohesive pattern of meaning into the total life experience. The practice of professional nursing is based on a synthesis of knowledge from the humanities, sciences, nursing theory, and research.

Philosophy of Teaching

The faculty at Mount Carmel College of Nursing believe that teaching-learning is a dynamic, interactive sharing of knowledge that stimulates lifelong learning for both learner and educator.

We believe that both learners and faculty are responsible for a collaborative teaching-learning process. Students are responsible for engaging in learning opportunities while faculty are responsible for providing innovative nursing education based on theory and evidence. As faculty we pledge to maintain our expertise and to promote nursing knowledge.

We strive to create an intellectually challenging learning environment where faculty role model professional education and nursing standards. We believe in developing caring relationships with students that promote personal, academic, and professional growth.

We believe in developing the learner to his/her greatest potential through growth of knowledge, skills, and attitudes that are hallmarks of the professional nurse.