Nursing students and faculty at Athens Technical College in Monroe received a $250,000 donation from Piedmont Athens Regional Medical Center. CEO of Piedmont Athens, Michael Burnett, presented the check at a board meeting for state technical colleges on Thursday.
That donation is intended to fund more teachers, renovate classrooms, and expand the nursing program’s capacity to 100 students per year. The nursing program at the Walton County Campus was only recently approved for instruction by the Georgia Board of Nursing.
Athens Tech is one of many other schools with nursing programs receiving grant money to mitigate the statewide nursing shortage. Healthcare professionals worry that the federal COVID vaccine mandate on medical workers — with a deadline on March 15 – is only making that shortage worse.
