Continuing Education Schedule at BCCC | Eastern North Carolina Now

Press Release:

    Class is scheduled to begin Tuesday, Oct. 9, at Beaufort County Community College in a career readiness course for those students interested in earning their high school equivalency while studying as nurse aides. The class, Career Readiness for Nurse Aide, will be 2 to 5 p.m. or 6 to 9 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays beginning Oct. 9 and ending Nov. 1 in Room 829 of Building 8 on the BCCC campus.

    The class is required for those students who plan to enroll in a Basic Skills Plus Certified Nurse Aide course scheduled to begin in January 2013. But it is also available as a stand-alone course for those students not planning to enroll in the course to prepare as nurse aides.

    The registration fee for the class is $64 which may be waived for those individuals who are currently unemployed, have received notice of a pending lay-off, are eligible for Federal Income Tax Credit or working and earning wages at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty level. The class will prepare students to take the Career Readiness Certification test and achieve at least a "silver* designation on the test" a pre-requisite for enrolling in the nurse aide class. Students who have already earned a Career Readiness Certification at the *silver* designation or above, may be exempt from some pre-requisite requirements.

    This is the second Basic Skills Plus Certified Nurse Aide I course offered by BCCC through a new program that, college officials hope, will be more successful than in past years in providing Basic Skills students with the skills they need to enter the work force.

    Under the program, students enrolled in General Educational Development, or GED, courses will also be enrolled in a Certified Nursing Assistant I course at the college.

    Once they receive their GEDs, these students will have specific job-related skills that will allow them to immediately enter the work force rather than having to wait for job-specific classes after they have completed their high school equivalency work, according to Laurie Weston, BCCC*s Basic Skills coordinator.

    Students in the BCCC Basic Skills Plus Certified Nurse Aide I course are tentatively scheduled to attend school Mondays and Wednesdays from 2:30 to 5:30 p.m. and 6 to 9 p.m. working on their GED studies in the afternoon and CNA I classes that same night.

    The program will also give students real-life examples that they can apply to their GED studies, because the Basic Skills and Nursing Assistant faculty have worked together to provide context-based instruction and experiences in both classrooms.

    In addition to the registration fee, other costs of the program include a $30 Career Readiness Certification fee; a $15 fee for workplace observation; a $15 fee for a performance assessment, and a $26.25 cost for a required textbook, "The Nursing Assistant's Survival Guide." Some fees and textbook costs may be waived for qualifying students.

    For more information about the Career Readiness for Nurse Aide, interested persons should contact Lou Stout, director of Occupational Extension, at (252) 940-6307. For information about the Basic Skills Plus Certified Nurse Aide I course, interested persons should contact Weston at (252) 940-6322.