Doctors and nurses: UTB-TSC now offers new doctoral degree

Dania Ochoa and Delia Zorrilla always had their eyes on loftier goals.

Both of them already have successful, full-time careers - Ochoa as a nursing instructor at the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College, Zorrilla as a nurse with the U.S. Public Health Service. But they wanted to do more to contribute to community health and serve as a role model for others, they say.

"It's always been a personal goal to get higher education and make a change in the community," Ochoa said, a Brownsville resident.

So Ochoa and Zorrilla, of Laguna Vista, now are pursuing doctoral degrees in nursing through a new partnership between UTB-TSC and The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. The program is the first of its kind in the Rio Grande Valley.

Ochoa wants to become a professor and do research on obesity, while Zorrilla wants to pursue research on tuberculosis programs.

"This was something I wanted to do in the past, but it wasn't available," Zorrilla said.

Texas' border region, including the Rio Grande Valley, still has a shortage of nurses, according to state figures. And one of the contributing factors in that shortage is a scarcity of nursing faculty at the universities, said Kathy Dougherty, director of the bachelor's in nursing program at UTB-TSC.

"The nursing shortage is critical, and in order to enroll students we need faculty," Dougherty said. "We advertise for faculty, but don't get the responses that they get in Houston or San Antonio ... so now we're growing our own faculty, which was really what we had to do."

UTB-TSC's collaboration with UT Health Science Center-Houston kicked off last fall. The university's doctoral students are taking classes by videoconference, and periodically traveling to Houston.

"The goal next year is to have the faculty come here," Dougherty said.

Both UTB-TSC and the University of Texas-Pan American already have master's programs in nursing, which is the first step to "growing our own" faculty, officials said. Six graduates of UTB-TSC's master's program, including Ochoa, teach classes in the vocational-nurse or associate's degree programs.

At UTPA, about 30 percent of nursing-faculty members are graduates of the university's master's program, said Jan Maville, master's program coordinator. Several more are teaching at South Texas College, she said.

But to teach bachelor's- or master's-level courses, instructors must have a doctorate, Dougherty said. That's why bringing doctoral courses to the Valley was an important goal, she said.

Statewide, nursing schools are having trouble filling faculty positions. Nursing schools in 2006 had a 6 percent faculty-vacancy rate in 2006 - the highest since 1997, according to a report from the Texas Center for Nursing Workforce Studies. If those jobs had been filled, an additional 2,700 students could have enrolled, the report says.

Many nursing instructors in Texas are expected to retire in the next decade, possibly worsening the shortage problem, according to the center's report. And it might be tough to attract new faculty because pay is generally lower than what hospitals or agencies pay, the report says.

"Our salaries are not competitive with the private sector - you have to want to teach," Dougherty said.

Bringing in more nursing faculty is the key to overcoming a scarcity of nurses, said Dominique Halaby, executive director of the Valley Initiative for Development and Enhancement. The organization has put together an alliance of local hospitals and universities to facilitate nurse training and placement.

"That's the forefront of the shortage," Halaby said of faculty vacancies. "Now, those who have the innate desire to teach will have the avenue to do that locally."