Precollege Programs: An Innovative Way to Introduce Nursing to College-Bound Students.

The precollege summer program at the authors’ university is an opportunity for students in grades 11 and 12 to experience college living for 2 weeks. Each student enrolls in one college-level course, which meets daily for 3 hours, and participates in social activities and other programming to support their understanding of college life. Most stay overnight in campus dormitories. The authors’ school of nursing took advantage of this chance to expose highachieving, college-bound pupils to the diversity of the nursing field by offering three courses in the program: Advances in Cardiovascular Medicine and Technology, Forensics: Violence and Crime in U.S. Public Health, and Global Health Leadership in the 21st Century. From the start, the authors recognized the importance of holding these classes in their building, which allowed them to showcase the knowledge, experience, and facilities that a school of nursing can offer. For the global health course, the class was composed of 10 girls and four boys of various ethnicities, including one international student. Eleven of the students were rising 12th graders, and the other three were entering 11th grade. Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecological theory guided the development of this course; global health was taught as hierarchical and interacting systems at the individual, community, national, and international levels. Learning activities ranged from lectures and panel discussions by faculty and expert guests, readings from Reimagining Global Health (Farmer, Kim, Kleinman, & Basilico, 2013) and other texts, weekly written reflections and current events reports by students, and field trips with onsite briefings and hands-on activities.