UNI ROTC gives students a shot at becoming a nurse

The University of Northern Iowa and its R-O-T-C program have forged a partnership with the Allen College of Nursing in Waterloo. Lieutenant Colonel Michael DePuglio explains students getting an academic degree can also jump-start their military career.During their normal curriculum at UNI and Allen nursing school, they’ll also take ROTC, and after graduating with a bachelors degree in nursing, will be part of the Army Nurse Corps, and serve at army hospitals. DePuglio says the student body and reserve officer training program reflect changes in today’s military.The chief of the Army Nurse Corps is a man for the first time, and at UNI, 37 percent of the ROTC cadets are women. There’s always a need for medical staff in the military, and DePuglio says this program will answer that need as well as making ROTC scholarships available to nursing students.During training, nurses have to do clinical work and the ROTC nurse cadets will go do that at military hospitals in Washington State, the capital in Washington D-C, or Hawaii. He says the ROTC scholarship pays for all tuition, books, lab fees and gives a monthly stipend. De Puglio says most of the seventy students now in the program are getting that kind of scholarship, and they hope to expand it.