PROVIDENCE – In the much ballyhooed economic development strategy, The WAVE, created by Gov. Gina Raimondo’s team, the “W” in Wave stands for workforce development, with the goal of “building the skills for success.”

As part of its sales-pitch language, Raimondo’s strategy touts that Rhode Island’s comeback will be sparked by the effort “to help people gain the skills they need to compete” and “to match employers with qualified employees.”

The strategy recommends restructuring the current workforce training system “to make sure that Rhode Islanders have the right skills for success.”

Further, the strategy recommends new partnerships and coordination among high schools, community colleges and businesses “to forge pathways to good careers,” citing programs in Connecticut. Such partnerships, The WAVE brochure continues, “could create a steady stream of talented, trained workers.”

In our own backyard
The irony is that the Raimondo team needed only to look in its own backyard to discover one of the most innovative programs in the nation, the Rhode Island Nurses Institute Middle College charter high school, a four-year program that melds high school and college curriculum.

RINI-MC, as its known by its students, just held its second annual graduation on June 11 at Rhode Island College.

The program, which begins in 10th grade, employs a 13th grade, a fourth-year of studies, to act as a bridge between high school studies and college coursework to follow.

Further, in terms of matching the students and their enhanced skill training with Rhode Island-based employers, the health care sector and nursing in particular are where the demand for workforce is projected to grow in Rhode Island.

The R.I. Department of Labor and Training has forecast that by 2018, more than 4,500 new nurses will be needed to fill the growing need for nursing jobs and to replace RNs that will retired or leave the profession.

In terms of building the middle class with good-paying jobs, the starting salary for an RN with a B.S. degree is about $50,000 a year, and a nurse practitioner or a nurse in specialty care can earn as much as $120,000 a year, according to Pamela L. McCue, the school’s CEO.

And, the program at RINI-MC offers a pathway to success for a diverse population. Many students from the program will become the first in their families to graduate from high school and attend college.

Graduating senior Sheba Ben, who has been accepted into the University of Rhode Island’s College of Nursing as a participant in its Talent Development program, said in a news release: “It was the school’s preparation that gave me the upper hand and allowed for this unexpected opportunity.

Ben quoted the Latin phrase, aut vaim inveniam aut faciam. “It’s Latin for ‘I shall either find a way or make one,’” she explained, which because of her experience at RINI-MC, has become her creed to live by.

Nurses hold up more than half the health care system
On the afternoon of the graduation, ConvergenceRI sat down to talk with Pamela Cipriano, Ph.D., RN, who is the 35th president of the American Nurses Association, the nation’s largest nurses organization representing some 3.1 million RNs.

Cipriano would be delivering the keynote address at the graduation ceremony that night, which would also include an address by Sayday Nagbe, the Class of 2015 Valedictorian, and the presentation of the CVS MinuteClinic Future Nurse Scholarship by Angela Patterson, the chief nurse practitioner officer for CVS Health’s MinuteClinic division.

“We need a well-prepared workforce, and for nursing, that’s specifically aligned with The Future of Nursing report – that nurses advance through education and practice to the full scope of their educational skills,” Cipriano told ConvergenceRI. At the same time, she said, “It’s imperative that we work to increase the diversity of our workforce; the nursing and health care workforce does not mirror the population of this country.”

RINI-MC, Cipriano continued, “is one of the top innovative, cutting-edge programs [in the nation.] Yet, the program is not well known yet, Cipriano said. The reason, in part, is “because we don’t have a good way to replicate some of these phenomenal models. It’s going to take the promotion and sharing of that information – by people like you,” she said.

Cipriano said her message to the graduates would be this: “You are entering a career with endless possibilities, with the opportunity ahead of them to advance to a four-year degree program. You care coming from an amazing [academic] foundation. I want to encourage that trajectory, toward a career that you can treasure.”