Shelley Hanson FUTURE PLANS – Tanya Rogers, assistant vice president for nursing education at WVU Medicine Wheeling Hospital, stands with renderings of inside the future Center for Nursing Education.

WHEELING — WVU Medicine Wheeling Hospital officials on Thursday unveiled a plan to open a new Center for Nursing Education at the former NTTC building on Wheeling University’s campus.

The hospital was already leasing the building for office space but now plans to renovate the 15,000-square-foot structure and use it to train people to become registered nurses, a job that is in high demand locally and across the United States.

The 21-month program, anticipated to begin fall 2027, will provide graduates with an RN diploma. Once they graduate, the nurses will take the RN board exam, which is the same test nurses who receive bachelor’s or associate’s degrees take.

Students who are accepted into the program will not have to pay tuition or for their books or supplies. In exchange, they will be required to work bedside for a WVU Medicine hospital for three years.

The admissions process will begin this coming August, with about 26 people being chosen to become the first class. Applicants will undergo screening, testing and an interview process before being selected.

The center itself will include two classrooms, a virtual reality and skills lab, a wellness center, testing center, meditation room, laundry room, food pantry and more.

The program is already accredited by the Accreditation Commission for Education in Nursing and is provisionally approved by the West Virginia RN Board.

An RN diploma focuses on hands-on clinical education and advanced simulation technology and does not include unrelated classes offered at a liberal arts college.

Douglass Harrison, president and CEO of WVU Medicine Wheeling Hospital and president of the North Region, said the purpose of the center will be to “grow our own” nurses.

“There’s a nursing shortage, right? And we can’t fill enough bedside nurses, and so this program is meant to take matters into our own hands and to train nurses to work at the bedside of the patients in our community,” Harrison said during a media event at the former NTTC building on Thursday afternoon.

“As our system continues to grow, even with all of the schools around the state, we cannot meet our needs and our demand for nursing. As you know, in a hospital, all the patient care starts with nursing and it ends with nursing, so we need qualified nurses at the bedside to care for patients.”

Harrison said Wheeling Hospital has 500 job openings across all specialties, many of them in nursing specialties.

“We’re excited to meet that demand and fill that void,” he added. “This is meant to fulfill nursing positions within our region and across our system.”

A Center for Nursing Education is already open in Morgantown and recently graduated its first class. In addition to Wheeling, another CNE is planned for Martinsburg, W.Va.

Harrison said renovations to the Wheeling CNE will begin this summer.

Tanya Rogers, assistant vice president for nursing education at WVU Medicine Wheeling Hospital, said it is important to remove barriers that many students have, including financial, scheduling and support such as food, hygiene and mental health.

“Students who commute more than 50 miles away will have free housing for the three days they are on campus,” she said.

Rogers noted the LPN school at Reynolds Memorial Hospital will remain in place.