NORMAL - Illinois State University and Heartland Community College want other two-year colleges in the state to follow their example recruiting nursing students into nursing-home careers, and encouraging advanced nursing degrees.

On Friday, HCC and ISU's Mennonite College of Nursing co-hosted an event that brought together nursing instructors from six schools and a dozen nursing home administrators.

Billed as the Consortium on Issues in Long-Term Care, the meeting allowed the group to focus on long-term care issues, using ISU's Expanding Teaching Nursing Home Project as a model.

That project is a joint effort between ISU and Heritage Enterprises to attract more students into the long-term healthcare field.

The project uses Heritage facilities as a clinical site for nursing students. In turn, the university analyzes those sites.

"With the consortium we want to … demonstrate our project as a model, and encourage nursing homes to adopt similar models involving two-year programs in their areas," said Charlene Aaron, who directs the ISU project.

By creating the consortium, ISU also wants community colleges to encourage more students in two-year programs to think about advanced degrees," said Aaron.

"Easing the transition for students for something such as the RN (registered nurse) to BSN (bachelor's of science in nursing) can help," said Kathy Walls, who is on HCC's nursing faculty.

Among schools that sent faculty to the event were HCC, John Wood, Carl Sandburg, Lincoln Land, Illinois Central, and DuPage, said Aaron.

A second consortium meeting will be in January at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, she said.

Some of the state's community colleges already have relationships with nursing homes. But what the ISU/HCC event pushed was the formalizing of programs between two-year schools and universities in their area, as well as more developed connections with area nursing homes.

ISU's Mennonite College and Heartland created such a formal agreement this August, said Aaron.

Pat Comstock, vice president of public policy for the Illinois Healthcare Association, was keynote speaker. She offered advice on how groups could form partnerships.

Later, roundtable sessions allowed nursing home administrators to exchange ideas with nursing instructors.

At Heritage Manor, for example, the employer offers scholarships that allow an employee to study nursing without having to quit a jobs.

"They not only pay for books and tuition, but they pay while the student attends class, too," said Susan Holifield, who is the administrator of Heritage's Colfax facility.

Brenda Corcoran, who is nursing director at the Colfax home, is an example of the program.

She began more than two decades earlier as a certified nursing assistant at the facility. Later, while she continued her work there, Heritage funded her studies at Heartland, she said.