In late June, Robin Nelhuebel, the system director of education at the Riverside Health System received an email from Forbes magazine requesting Riverside’s logo.
Riverside knew it was in the running for a ranking in the magazine’s top trade schools, but the magazine couldn’t then disclose whether they’d made it.
A week later, Nelhuebel got the news: Riverside had made the cut, placing eighth out of the country’s top trade schools. What’s more — it was the only trade school in Virginia to be ranked in the top thirty, Nelhuebel said.
“It was certainly a wonderful and welcome surprise,” she added.
But the school has a lot to offer, she continued — namely, its affiliation with Riverside Health System.
“It gives us a leg up on the competition in that we have a lot of clinical sites,” she said.
The school’s main campus is in Newport News, but the clinical sites where students train are at all Riverside hospital locations in the Hampton Roads. Many students then go on to work for Riverside after graduation, Nelhuebel added.
When the school was established in 1915, it was just a nursing school, but over the past century, it has expanded to include other programs. Nursing still gets the most students, with about 180 enrolling each year for the two-year program.
Radiologic technology, physical therapy assisting, and surgical technology—all of which are 18-month programs—get between 20 and 50 students, Nelhuebel said. They also have a one-year practical nursing program, a medical assisting program, and a six-week certificate program in nurse aide training.
Nursing still gets the most students, with about 180 enrolling each year for the two-year program. Radiologic technology, physical therapy assisting, and surgical technology—all of which are 18-month programs—get between 20 and 50 students, Nelhuebel said.
They also have a one-year practical nursing program, a medical assisting program, and a six-week certificate program in nurse aide training.
All programs maintain a small classroom size and student-to-faculty ratio, Nelhuebel said, adding that those were two of the attributes cited by Forbes in its report.
The magazine also ranked schools according to their earnings potential, affordability and quality, Nelhuebel said.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median salary for nurses in the U.S. is $68,450. Median salaries in individual states can vary widely, however.
Nelhuebel said over 90 percent of their students find employment.
According to a Riverside press release, Forbes introduced the ranking as an acknowledgment of the increasing importance of trade schools in providing an affordable, quality education with a greater potential payoff than traditional four-year programs.
Riverside’s application deadline for fall was in May — so before the rankings came out — but Nelhuebel is confident the ranking will boost applications later on.
“I’m certainly hopeful that not only will this ranking improve our application flow, but also continue to show that good reputation that we’ve had for a hundred years.”
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