Penn State Fayette, which admitted its first international students during the past year, is teaming up with a university in India to educate some of its nursing students.
The university has partnered with Saveetha University to allow nursing students to attend the local school for their final two years and earn a bachelor's degree from Penn State.
The idea was the brainchild of Penn State Fayette Chancellor Emmanuel Osagie, who has been working for several years on international collaborations.
"The partnership illustrates how our campus can step into the global village and make important connections," Osagie said. "It does not suffice anymore to just educate students locally. Students need to learn how to work in other cultures and different places around the world. Not only does this venture bring nursing students from India to our campus in Fayette County, it opens opportunity down the road for our faculty and students to go to Saveetha University."
Osagie made several trips to India to visit the university, located in Chennai, the nation's fourth-largest city. Last month, key representatives from Saveetha visited Penn State Fayette to tour the campus, meet faculty and sign the agreement.
The partnership will allow about 10 to 15 nursing students at Saveetha to attend Penn State beginning in fall 2012, said Melissa Miner, campus coordinator for nursing programs.
The students will do their first two years in India. In the third year, they will complete their associate degree in nursing and take the exam for their registered nurse license. In the fourth year, they will earn their bachelor's degree.
"To have an international component brought into our nursing program is going to be win-win," Miner said.
She said it will be a boon when students focus on cultural nursing, which is the idea that people from different cultures react to medical problems in different ways. People from some cultures won't verbally respond to pain, for example, so nurses are taught to look for nonverbal clues.
"Students are taught cultural nursing. They don't necessarily get to practice it in Fayette County," Miner said.
