Written by: Michael Hanna
The English Department and the School of Nursing at Southern Adventist University are planning to restart the Japanese Nursing Program, which is comprised of Japanese nursing students from the Saniku Gakuin College in Japan. Amanda Livanos, an associate professor in the English Department, is one of the three coordinators of the program.
“They just reached out to see if we could start it up again this summer,” Livanos said.
According to Livanos, the program is for students from Saniku Gakuin College, a Seventh-Day Adventist college in Japan. The students speak some English in Japan but are seeking to improve their language skills by participating in the program. Livanos said Saniku Gakuin College is currently doing a survey of student interest to find out how many students might come.
In an interview with Holly Gadd, dean of the School of Nursing and another program coordinator, the current plan is to open the program back up from Aug. 7 to Aug. 22.
“We’re just in the very early stages of our planning,” Gadd said. “I know that we struggled with some dates, [but] it looks like we’ve got some firm dates early on in August. We’ll probably be doing similar things to what we’ve done before, where they have the ESL classes here with the English department. They have some nursing things like health assessment, and we teach them the BLS classes and basic cardiac life support or CPR classes.”
Gadd said she has been corresponding with staff members at Saniku Gakuin College about the curriculum and activities within the program.
In an interview, Laurie Stankavich, an associate professor in Southern’s English Department and another program coordinator, said the Japanese nursing students learn CPR in their nursing program in Japan, but they haven’t necessarily studied it yet. The program offers that class because it will help the students in their nursing studies.
“They stopped coming because of scheduling conflicts, but then during the COVID era we didn’t restart it because travel was difficult between the countries,” Stankavich said. “And now, we have word from them that they would like to restart the program. They used to come for about two and a half weeks — that was typical — and besides the classes, we do outings.”
The program was last conducted in 2019.