An Added Dimension to the Faculty Role: The Accelerated Student

Nursing faculty work hard at helping students achieve academic success by utilizing a variety of support services. The question guiding this study is: Do accelerated and traditional BSN students have different characteristics or different valued support services? The characteristics of accelerated and traditional BSN students were obtained from a larger longitudinal study (N=93). The Support Services Questionnaire collected data from a convenient sample of two groups of BSN students: accelerated (n=26), traditional (n=49). The results presented accelerated students as primarily female, financially supported, and holding a variety of college degrees. Traditional students were represented as female, younger, working and not having any baccalaureate degrees. The implications are accelerated students preferred non-institutional support services, while traditional students preferred institutional support services. Recommendations for nursing schools and faculty are offered