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Alvin Community College has signed a partnership with Texas Woman’s University to help Associate Degree Nursing students transition into a Bachelor’s Degree program.

The partnership will help reduce education costs and shorten the amount of time for students to pursue their Bachelor’s Degree.

“We are excited to offer our students the opportunity to be concurrently enrolled to pursue the Bachelor’s Degree from Texas Woman’s while obtaining the Associate Nursing Degree from Alvin Community College,” said Dr. Debi Fontenot, ACC Nursing director. “More clinical agencies show hiring preferences to nurses with Baccalaureate degrees. This partnership with TWU will help make our ACC graduates more competitive in the job market.”

The program will launch in Spring 2021 and is the second collaboration between Texas Woman’s and a Community College.

The announcement comes at a time when the state’s health care work force has become increasingly stressed during the global pandemic caused by the coronavirus.

“This innovative program demonstrates the true collaborative culture that Texas Woman’s University has with community colleges,” TWU College of Nursing Dean Rosalie Mainous said. “It will help Texas put more baccalaureate-level nurses on the front lines faster, and it creates pathways for students to gain advanced nursing skills.”

The collaborative offering between Texas Woman’s and Alvin Community College provides a more direct path to a Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree. In the program, students work concurrently toward the associate’s degree at ACC and the bachelor’s degree at TWU, which allows students to complete both degrees within four years seamlessly.

With Texas already experiencing a strained nursing workforce, the state is projected to have a deficit of some 60,000 registered nurses (RN) and nearly 5,000 nurse practitioners (NP) by the year 2030, about 20 percent fewer RNs and 25 percent fewer NPs than the state projects it will need to meet demand, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services.

For more information about the Nursing program at ACC, visit .