Education
BY VANESSA HOLT & LIZZY SPANGLER
SHSU growing nursing school size to meet workforce needs
This November, Sam Houston State University began a $13 million-$14 million renovation of The Woodlands Center to increase the capacity of its nursing school, officials said. While the campus’s footprint will not be expanding, its interior space will be renovated, approximately tripling the amount of space for the School of Nursing, said Dr. Devon M. Berry, director of the nursing school. The project will increase the number of simulation and skills labs, and the number of active learning classrooms. “It was our desire to see what we could do to help reduce the need for nurses,” Berry said. “So that meant for us, asking, ‘What can we do to expand our enrollment?’” Berry said generally, the three barriers that can keep nursing schools from being able to expand are a lack of space, clinical placements and nursing faculty. The renovation will address the lack of space, he said. “For us to be able to increase the number of
students ... we needed to increase the number of classrooms and labs that we had,” Berry said. Berry said the simulation labs act similarly to flight simulators. The labs also help reduce the number of hours a student needs to be in a clinical setting if they can increase the hours they’re in a simulated environment. “This allows us to give the students even more practice in a safe and controlled environment,” Berry said. Berry said since the School of Nursing began graduating students around 13 years ago, about 1,400 nurses have been placed in communities. Renovations are expected to be complete around September 2026. Following that, SHSU has a three-year growth plan to increase enrollment by nearly 70%—from enrolling 85 students twice a year to 144 students twice a year. Berry said that would move the nursing school from an enrollment of around 400-500 students to around 650-750 students. 2024 SNAPPI launches through $999,500 grant from Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board Study over two semesters showed SNAPPI reduced reliance on part-time faculty by 10% 2025 March: SNAPPI receives additional $999,500 grant from THECB to expand in state October: Information presented to Texas Board of Nursing for pilot program November: TBON approves program to allow nurses with bachelor’s of science in nursing to serve as instructors The Shared Nurse Academic Practice Partnership Initiative, or SNAPPI, will expand its scope. Strengthening the nursing pipeline
2.5 years of planning
$13M-$14M cost
September 2026 completion date
70% increased enrollment capacity to 144 students twice a year
SOURCE: SAM HOUSTON STATE UNIVERSITY/COMMUNITY IMPACT
MONTGOMERY COLLEGE DR.
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What’s next
Another detail
With the renovations planned on the second, third and fourth floors, SHSU’s Woodlands Center Building will support an enrollment of 720 students—nearly twice the current enrollment of 380, Berry said. The current configuration of the building does not have the instructional capacity to meet the demand for SHSU’s School of Nursing program, Berry said. The project will add six student practice rooms with features such as mannequin simulators; nine standard practitionary rooms; and five simulation rooms for ER, labor and delivery, Berry said. It will also renovate two skill labs currently on the fourth level and add eight bed skill labs around an area where 16 classrooms are located, Berry said. Eight of the existing classrooms will see renovations for future active learning capabilities, Berry said. Other renovations include classroom upgrades with dual screens, projectors and remote learning capability.
In addition to renovating and expanding its School of Nursing, SHSU announced Nov. 10 it plans to further expand a program it launched in 2024 in which hospital-employed, Bachelor of Science in Nursing-prepared nurses serve as inde- pendent clinical instructors for nursing students. The Texas Board of Nursing approved the program, the Shared Nurse Academic Practice Partnership Initiative, or SNAPPI, for launch in rural and underserved areas of the state, accord- ing to the Nov. 10 SHSU news release. SHSU has partnered on the program locally with St. Luke’s Health-The Woodlands Hospital and Houston Methodist The Woodlands Hospital in Montgom- ery County, and added Memorial Hermann The Woodlands Medical Center to its partners in 2025, Berry said. In the spring 2026 semester, SNAPPI’s clinical instructors will nearly double from 7 to 13, with 106 SHSU nursing students training under SNAPPI nurses, Berry said. “Texas faces a severe nursing workforce shortage, and the lack of master’s-prepared faculty has been a major barrier to expanding nursing education,” Berry said in the release. “This innovative pilot will help us collect the data needed to demonstrate that BSN-prepared nurses ... can be entrusted with the same responsibilities
SOURCES: SAM HOUSTON STATE UNIVERSITY, DR. DEVON BERRY/COMMUNITY IMPACT
as MSN-prepared nurses in clinical instruction.” The program was initially funded by a grant from Texas Higher Education Coordination Board’s Nursing Innovation Program, Commu- nity Impact previously reported. SHSU’s School of Nursing received $100,000 from the Kilroy Foundation this fall to help support the program, SHSU announced.
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THE WOODLANDS EDITION
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