CLEVELAND — We have one of the best hospitals in the world right here in our back yard. There is a program Cleveland Clinic is offering to high schoolers that prepares students who aspire to work in health care.
The program's focus? To give students more opportunities and make nursing more diverse.
The ASPIRE Nurse Scholars Program is an enrichment program for high school students. Created by Cleveland Clinic and sponsored by the Howley Foundation, the program selects high school juniors interested in pursuing careers in the health care field.
“It is our job to help them fine tune and decide if this is really what they want to do and then help remove those barriers," explains Sol Sanchez, nursing professor of development specialist for the ASPIRE program.
ASPIRE aims to help add more diversity to nursing ranks by giving students more experience at world-renowned Cleveland Clinic.
“We are taking students from our own community and teaching them early on to be the caregivers that Cleveland Clinic wants them to be," Sanchez adds.
The pipeline program began in 2017. Through partnership with Tri-C and Ursuline College, students like Nathaly Mendez can earn their bachelor's degree while training in the program with an added bonus: a college scholarship.
"Once we transferred our first semester of college, that’s when we were expected to start working at the hospital, so that’s what helped me. It was just being able to have all of the skills," says Mendez, now a junior at Ursuline.
Proof of the success of ASPIRE is Ayanna Lewis. She is one of the first five graduates of the program and now works as a coronary ICU nurse at Cleveland Clinic.
“When you directly fund a program like this, you invest in the community," Lewis says. "I am my community. The tutoring, the stipends, the mental support and the provided counseling, you need all those things to make it through nursing school.”
There are two more ASPIRE candidates set to graduate this year. The program is expecting 15 graduates in 2024, which will be the first group of Ursuline College scholars.
The ASPIRE program is already recruiting for its 8th core group, which will start in the spring of 2024.