CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A cohort of aspiring nurses are putting their pens to paper and getting a reward of up to $25,000 dollars in exchange for a three-year work commitment in the field.
WVU Medicine Thomas Hospitals came together with BridgeValley Community & Technical College Thursday for a signing ceremony honoring the fifth cohort of nursing students accepted into the WVU Medicine Aspiring Nurses Program.
Jennifer Morris was among the 11 cohorts entering into the program Thursday. She is in her second semester in the nursing program at BridgeValley. 
Morris said this opportunity is a gamechanger for her as she gets through school.
“It has been really amazing, its been a blessing just to have the opportunity,” Morris said. “I’m a little bit older, 32 years old, so just being able to start over and BridgeValley has been really helpful in that, its definitely been challenging but rewarding.”
Each student who is admitted into the program receives up to $25,000 over the course of four semesters, including a sign-on bonus, which gives them the financial support as well as the flexibility to meet day-to-day life expenses and other needs while working to become a nurse.
Through this program, students receive the $25,000 reward beyond what they typically get in terms of student loans, grants, and scholarships, and in exchange, they agree to a three-year work commitment following graduation.
In addition, the students accepted into the program also receive support from academic success coaches and retention specialists.
WVU Medicine Assistant Vice President of System Nursing Services Jessica Huffman said they wanted to be able to better accommodate those considering going into nursing.
“We wanted to help increase the pipeline of students, being able to access education for nursing and stay in nursing school successfully, and to enter into wonderful careers as nurses,” Huffman said.
Huffman said the Aspiring Nurses Program started as a pilot for WVU Medicine, and a total of 13 students are accepted into it during each round of cohorts.
She said the students will do most of their clinical rotations at WVU Medicine facilities to help them get incorporated into the team early on and ease their transition into a practice once they graduate. She said they will work for WVU Medicine Thomas Hospitals once they do graduate.
Morris said her time so far in the nursing program at BridgeValley has not always been easy, but it’s definitely one of the quickest paths to fulfilling her dream of becoming a nurse, and with the help of this program, it will be well worth it.
“With the challenges, you definitely grow as a person, personally and professionally, so it is extremely rewarding to go through these hard things and then look back and say, hey, look, I did it,” she said.
Huffman said that for as long as she has been a nurse, there has been a nursing shortage.
She said it sparked significant discussions and some controversy during the height of the Covid-19 Pandemic, and ever since then, healthcare experts and universities have been working together on ways to make the nursing industry stronger.
Huffman said this Aspiring Nurses Program marks a major step in the right direction after looking to hone in on what the major causes of the nursing shortage was.
“There was a lot of tuition support, the governor of West Virginia had been very, very generous in supporting nurses, there were a lot of funds dedicated to nursing education, but we found that students were still struggling just with life needs, so this program was created in response to some of the feedback from students and the leadership at different academic universities,” she said.
Huffman said they have now signed over 500 students across their health system since the program’s inception.
And she said that those entering the program come from all different walks of life.
“We have nurses who are what you would call more traditional students, maybe coming straight from high school, but we also have people who are looking at second careers, I’ve met people around the state from all kinds of different backgrounds,” said Huffman.
This fifth cohort of nursing students who participated in the signing ceremony at St. Francis Hospital in Charleston Thursday included Phil Pfister, the 2006 World’s Strongest Man.