The Online Nursing Program within the Global Campus offers registered nurses a chance to receive a University of Illinois-quality education while juggling family and work life.

The nursing program is the first in the Global Campus Initiative to get off the ground. It began accepting applications on Oct. 1 for its first semester that starts January 2008. Applications can be submitted on its Web site at global.uillinois.edu.

Geared toward registered nurses, the online program offers a chance to earn a full Bachelor of Science in Nursing. Traditionally, this program was offered at the Chicago campus. Later the program went online even before the Global Campus, said Carol Humpherys, director of the nursing program at the Urbana-Champaign campus.

“College of Nursing faculty put the online curriculum together,” she said. “It’s based on the same traditional courses that students would have taken.”

Humpherys said that because most of the interested students were already working registered nurses, they would not be able to take traditional classes.

“It was a logical step to translate that to a Global Campus program,” she said.

The University will still offer the on-campus degree program.

Teaching for this online program is extended to current faculty. Positions are also open to new faculty hired through the Global Campus, not the College of Nursing, Humpherys said.

Online faculty will meet the same requirements on-campus faculty would: a master’s degree in their nursing specialty and often years of clinical experience, said Iris Stovall, director of instructor development and support for the Global Campus, in an e-mail interview.

“Several College of Nursing instructors have agreed to be Subject Matter Experts and to work with the Global Campus to develop their courses,” she said. “However, we will be hiring additional instructors in order to scale the Global Campus to teach all qualified students.”

The total cost for Illinois residents is $18,495, compared to $20,550 for out-of-state students. A 10 percent discount on tuition and application fees is mandated by the Board of Trustees, said Charles Evans, assistant vice president for the University and dean of academic affairs for the Global Campus.

“We’re using the resources of the university, which the citizens of the state of Illinois have contributed to,” Evans said. “So there should be a break.”

The Global Campus will also offer a new Master of Education program within the College of Education in E-learning, Evans said. The program is working its way through the University’s review process, and it should be ready to accept applications by December.

“The Board of Trustees has given us some money to say ‘let’s get this started,'” Evans said. “But we will pay that investment back. So we need to be responsible.

“Regardless, we don’t want to take long term drawn out resources, we want to add value (to the University).”