SEASON 3: Ep. 2 Building Jersey College to Address the Nursing Shortage with Greg Karzhevsky

In this episode, Greg Karzhevsky, founder of Jersey College, shares how a real workforce need led him to create a nursing school built for adult learners. What began as a way to support medically fragile children and the families who care for them grew into a multi-campus institution focused on student support, access, and outcomes. Greg walks through the challenges of building and scaling a highly regulated institution, the importance of mission-driven leadership, and how Jersey College continues to respond to the ongoing nursing shortage by meeting students where they are.

This podcast is sponsored by Viv Higher Education 

About Viv Higher Education

Viv Higher Education is a Boston-based, female-owned comprehensive marketing agency specializing in higher education. With expertise in strategic planning, creative asset development, and media campaigns, we focus on enrollment-centric initiatives. Our approach is grounded in industry best practices, ensuring precision in reaching target audiences. We have extensive experience in marketing to diverse groups, including high school students, Hispanic, military, LGBTQ+, international students, and online learners. Navigating the complex landscapes of university environments is second nature to us, and we prioritize fostering collaborations that yield mutually beneficial outcomes. With a personable, nimble, and highly responsive approach, we deliver tailored solutions to empower organizations to achieve their objectives.

Website: https://vivhied.com/ 
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Transcript

 Hi Greg. Welcome. It's awesome to have you on the show. How's it going today? Going great. It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks so much for having me. I am so excited to hear about your, , origin story of Jersey College and the amazing work that you're doing in addressing the nursing shortage.

so I'm super excited to learn from you today. Before we do that, just give us a quick intro of who you are, how you came into this work and what you're doing at Jersey College. absolutely. So again, my name is Greg Ksky. I'm the founder of Jersey College. , The college started, , back in 2004. The genesis of our institution was that I was working in a, family healthcare business it was a home care agency and one of the divisions that I helped start there was for, registered nurses and licensed practical nurses, RNs and LPNs.

They were taking care of, , medically fragile children in a home. They were providing shift based care, which means they were in the home from eight to 12 hours per shift. Some of our, child patients who are receiving two to three shifts per day. So that means they were receiving, you know, 14 to 21 shifts per week.

And we needed a lot of caregivers to take care of, these kids and their families. so when the nurses were in the home, the families were able to sleep, they were able to work and, have someone take care of their child. So. a lot of caregivers weren't into each child because some.

nurses had prior engagements, they had to call out or, they weren't able to make their shifts. So we needed to have enough individuals to take care of the specific care that each child required. And, so this was back in, you know, between 1997 and the early two thousands. you know, it was hard to find nurses then.

Just like, it's hard to find nurses now. There was a nursing shortage then just like there's a nursing shortage now and you know, especially dealing with medically fragile children and pediatric care in the home that was even, more of a specialty. So I thought, you know what, if we start a nursing school, our name is Jersey College and we started in New Jersey.

Because we can take some of the home health aides that also work for us and give them the opportunity to upgrade their license and their profession from a home health aide to a nurse. So that was really the founding of our institution. It was, a solution for an employer.

To try to help take our existing, employee base, give them the opportunity to have a higher, license, a higher degree, and, help themselves financially and also help the families that needed, um, these caregivers to take care of their children. Wow. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. And I'm immediately thinking, wow, you decided to found an institution and there are probably many other institutions that you could have approached about partnering or done this out of an established, institution, especially in New Jersey.

There are many options like that. What made you think, no, we really have to kind of home grow this and create something out of nothing?  At the time the goal was to try to target pediatric home care. nursing schools have a very general education format that prepares students to practice safely and also to take and ideally pass the licensure examiner, the NCLEX as we refer to it.

but we wanted to target, pediatrics specifically in the extent that we could because we still have to provide a very, appropriate education, which covers all of the various specialties and, curricular, aspects that nursing students need. but we can still focus and direct, toward pediatrics in the hopes that they would consider that as their profession and, join us and, and work in the home care agency in that capacity.

So, starting the school was really uh, an approach to creating a pipeline of nurses for an employer. Awesome. One of the missions that we really care about at Viv and with the institutions that we work with is bringing an entrepreneurial mindset to higher education because, uh. that's not often or usually there as much as we need it to be in the sector.

And nothing is more entrepreneurial than creating an institution instead of, building something that is already there. So I'm assuming it wasn't easy when you made that decision, to create. Jersey College and that there were things at the beginning and bumps on the road. So can you share a little bit about what early challenges you faced and how you had to overcome those with that entrepreneurial mindset?

Uh, I mean, it's just so many. In nursing and in nursing education, challenges never stopped, but, going to the, the beginning, educating oneself on the regulations involved with opening up a school. You know, there's so many regulations that you have to deal with at the state level.

And then, layering on top of that a nursing education. Now you have the board of nursing to deal with and you have to have your program approved by the board of Nursing. Um, and we have to make sure that our curriculum and the clinical experiences that we provided to our students then and even today.

are appropriate to make sure that they practice safely. Because at the end of of their educational journey with us, they become licensed as nurses, they're taking care of your family, your friends, your children. Your parents, and we need to make sure that what we're providing is the foundational knowledge so that they can practice safely.

So that was quite a responsibility that we had. making sure that our curriculum was appropriate, was manageable by the students that we had. And, a lot of adult learners were attracted to our program, so we needed to make sure, the way we, approached their education was based on their needs and their.

Capabilities of learning based on what was happening in their life. you know, everything from financial challenges. How do you cover payroll at the time to, how do you, make sure that you align with the regulatory requirements , of this type of, institution and, program that we're offering it was a mountain to climb over. But, we did it fortunately by breaking down that mountain to its little steps and, you know, slowly and surely we, we got to the top. I wanna dig into that just a little bit more because I think there are, , principles of entrepreneurial leadership that happened along the way where you were faced with a roadblock and you had to react a certain way or motivate your team that you were leading in a certain way.

What do you think, , does it take in those moments because it's not a guarantee, right? That you're gonna succeed, that you're going to overcome these hurdles, and then how do you, , make the team feel like the adversity that is being experienced is worth it, you know, and that there is going to be success at the end of the day?

you know, I'll start with kind of the, back end of your question first. , And providing a vision that everyone can, embrace and offering a nursing education is an incredibly meaningful. Thing to do in one's life. for me it's, you know, I can go to bed at night and, feel incredibly good about what we're doing and the lives that we're changing, both for our students as well as the patients that they're going to touch when they graduate.

but for the folks that have committed their blood, sweat, and tears to Jersey College. Offering them a vision of, we're going to do this differently. We're going to focus on student support. Students are not just going to be a number at Jersey College. We're going to meet the students' needs where they're at from a learning standpoint, from a psychosocial standpoint, from a financial standpoint.

We're going to do everything that we can to almost put them on our. Our shoulders so that we can help them cross the finish line and change their lives. a lot of folks gravitate toward that. , And we've been very fortunate to have , a number of long-term employees, some that have been with me for 20 years, Providing a vision that for someone to be able to follow and see and embrace and draw the meaning in their own lives from what they're doing at, in their professional career is I think one of the most important things that a leader or an entrepreneur can do. So having a really strong mission that people want to believe in is actually a building block, right?

Rather than having a vision or and leading people towards goals that maybe aren't inherently meaningful to them. And that could be a principle. Even that helps with entrepreneurial leadership because it's easier for people to follow along and accept the hurdles and the pain they're putting themselves through those early days.

Oh, absolutely. Uh, I mean, if you have to try to convince people that what you're doing is they're supposed to find meaning, and that's very challenging. Whereas if you have the opportunity to uncover the vision for them to see it , and start nodding along with you going, yes. This is important and it's so great because this matters at the individual level.

It makes the world of a difference to a family, but it also matters on a societal level in a massive way that we have enough nurses and that they're qualified and it's an economic, driver as well, not just a mission driver, right. In terms of societal impact. So that is a good combination. I do wanna ask you to outline the growth that you've experienced, 'cause I know it's been significant, and if you could take us from.

The founding and the goals that you had then to where you are now and the big leaps that you've taken since that would be great. Sure. So when we, first started, Jersey College and, brought in this fantastic team, this leadership, that team that we had way back in the early two thousands that are still part of Jersey College, I was really focused on the needs of the home care agency as the employer and meeting Their goals of having additional staff to take care of these children. And I didn't really think about what the rest of the community needed and how they would respond to it. And once the school started and you know, within a few years after, and we saw the opportunity that existed because there were so many individuals that were interested in becoming students because they had nowhere else to go.

Especially since we really cater to the adult learner, these are folks that would not necessarily have the opportunity to go to a community college or a traditional college or university because those slots are generally reserved for recent high school graduates. So we saw that there were a lot of adult learners that wanted to become nurses.

We recognized there's, , an opportunity here to grow. , So we started with our first campus in northern New Jersey. It was in Hackensack, New Jersey, which has since moved to Teterboro, New Jersey. That was our first location. And, , we were actually asked, by a hospital in the Tampa area in Florida to open up a location there because one of our employees had an interaction with their chief nursing officer.

and with that request, we opened up our second location, which was in Tampa, Florida, and we saw that, you know what, there is the opportunity to scale this. , So based on the managerial and process skills that I had gained working in the family business and the home care agency, along with our president, who came from a consulting background and from a legal background who really developed policies, procedures, and, capacities to scale this to multiple locations.

and that was really. What allowed us to grow is to create an infrastructure where we can do this and not have our foundational, principles, and regulatory requirements and compliance with the various entities that oversee us. making sure that infrastructure and foundation does not crumble because it's very easy for things to start breaking when you start growing and scaling.

But if you do it in a way where you're mindful of. The opportunities, but also keep your, vision toward the foundation , and complying with, basic, requirements that the Board of Nursing has or your accrediting body has, or the US Department of Education has, or the state licensing agency that allows you to confer a degree.

As you can see, we have a lot of individuals and organizations that we have to, , answer to. that's what allowed us to grow, but it. the entrepreneurial approach of scalability is what is, critical here. Well, and there are many higher ed institutions that want to scale and they're trying to scale perhaps through online programs that don't require the physical expansion that was required for you and that don't have the really massive regulatory pieces to deal with that you do.

And they're not scaling. Right. So just I want. to acknowledge the many layers that you had to navigate physical, you know, locations, finding locations that would work for you and for your students, spaces that complied with the regulations. And then also just understanding each unique community in which you were situating yourselves and the needs that they had and the workforce needs.

So it's just really impressive and I think something that we're not seeing a lot of in higher education. So I, think there. Are probably, a lot of leadership principles at play that would happen alongside just the massive demand that we have for nurses to explain your success, right? That strong leadership and like you said, a, really strategic approach to scale.

And this could only have been accomplished through having, a team of individuals at all levels that recognize this is important, that give their, hearts and their souls to this institution and to the students and to the, peers and colleagues that they work with. this could not have been achieved by one individual.

This is a team of, of individuals that have built Jersey College.  you know, Jersey College may be buildings and colleges and universities may be buildings, but it's the people inside of those buildings that make at least our institution what it is. And I, you know, I couldn't be more proud or more thankful and grateful for everything that they've given.

Yeah. Congratulations. That's amazing. Let's pivot a little bit to the student experience. I'm really curious, thinking about the nursing shortage that we still have and many students interested in nursing and that career, what do you think, what does it take to provide a really strong nursing education right now?

I think what it takes is a recognition and an understanding that the students that we serve have many challenges in their lives. the average age of a Jersey College student over the past 20 years, amazingly, has been 33. many of our students are coming from communities that have been underserved and they don't have the opportunity to become a, a nurse through the traditional, means that I explained a little earlier.

So what we really focus on in terms of the student experience, which is so, so important, and, and, part of our strategic goals is. To make sure that we support them in ways that many nursing programs and many colleges don't. We have very systematic. Mentorship programs where we assign every student to a mentor, and that mentor is systematically reminded to contact these students on a regular basis to check in with them, not from an academic standpoint, but from a psychosocial standpoint, from an emotional standpoint, to be that shoulder.

That will be there when they need to cry or that shoulder to bolster them up and motivate them, inspire them. and we have hundreds of mentors across all of our campuses that are reaching out to students on a regular basis, on a daily basis. And also then tracking those interactions so we can benchmark and assess whether those interactions are working.

So one of the things that we're very mindful of as a, not just an institution, but as an organization, is how do we approach data and how can we use data to inform our future decisions of how we expend our resources? But, mentorship is just one way that we support our students. We have positions within each of our campuses that we call associate deans, and they are there specifically for the student experience and for student support and to help them.

Everything from food insecurity, to housing insecurity, to family and, and domestic issues that they may experience. And many of our students do. We recognize that they have these challenges we couldn't even dream of. So we put these mechanisms in place to try to help them and allow them to pursue their education because once they graduate, they're kicked into a completely different income bracket.

their family life changes The trajectory of their family life is, altered, going forward because this is not just a job, , it's a career. So most of your students are non-traditional, would you say in terms of age and maybe oftentimes have families and a prior career, or do you get a significant amount of kind of that traditional college student as well?

I mean, it's a blend. But historically, since we started, the average age of our student is 33. So we have students that recently graduated high school. We have students that are 55, 60 years old. but many of our students, many, many, I would say the overwhelming majority as a result of the average age of our student, our second career, individuals, adult learners.

It's great to hear about the support systems that you have in place, and I'm wondering, did you have to do a lot of kind of industry research or research about what it takes to support non-traditional nursing students? Or is it really built on experience and what your students themselves have told you over the years in terms of what will be the most useful support for them and you've built it accordingly?

a lot of the measures that we put in place at Jersey College come from both scar tissue and also from the evaluation of what our students and what our stakeholders communicate to us. we look at qualitative as well as quantitative data so that we can put things in place to make sure that the, educational offering that we have is appropriate, that we cover the right material, that we approach it the right way, but also that the experience of the student is what they need and what they look for.

So we certainly look at their feedback. we have surveys that come into us, at the end of every semester, and we look both at the quantitative as well as the narrative qualitative component of that. and I, myself, as the Chancellor of Jersey College, read through those because it's important for me to know what's happening at all of our 19 locations.

and all of our folks, go through that , and read through that so they understand what we're doing right and where we can improve. Looking in the mirror and not being afraid of what the mirror reflects is an important concept that we drive to all of our, leaders. We can be afraid to look at ourselves.

So we have to look at what we can do better and what we can do better for our students. I like how you put that around approaching things based on both scar tissue and other data. maybe evolving approaches from scar tissue is another entrepreneurial principle there, right?

Because it's easy to say, oh, we didn't do it right. it's time to quit. You know, instead looking at, oh, what was the lesson here? And we're gonna pivot a little bit. For the next time we try something similar.   I am curious because you're, working in healthcare of course. that's the space in which you're educating people and the space that you're impacting, but I'm curious, what are the trends in both healthcare and in higher education that are most top of mind for you right now?

in healthcare. the regulations are constantly shifting the priorities for healthcare facilities like hospitals, long-term care facilities, et cetera. They're constantly shifting as those regulations and as Medicare reimbursement changes and as the attention and focus on, insurance companies and their reimbursement rates are impacting because they ultimately set the pay structures for our graduates.

You know, so we have to be mindful of the changes that are happening there. and even from a, care standpoint, , since COVID Healthcare has really, really changed, for instance, many hospitals are now embracing practical nurses back into the fold. Whereas for many, many, many years, they really only hired registered nurses.

Now they're hiring practical nurses as well, and they're approaching a team nursing model. and to try to be as effective as possible, both from, giving the patient a great experience while they're a patient at the hospital, but also from a, expense standpoint and making sure that they're, responsible from a financial.

Standpoint. So we're always monitoring that and communicating with our healthcare partners on how we can facilitate that, how we can help, how we can incorporate certain things within our curriculum to make sure that our students are not only practice safely, but how they can be better employees once they graduate.

So that bidirectional communication is critical  from a higher education standpoint. You know, there are many, many, things That we have to keep our eye on. Nursing education is hard. It is a hard program, to be proficient in and develop critical thinking skills so that you can practice safely.

That requires a lot of reading. Just the weight of books that students receive from Jersey College, can be measured in tens of pounds. the trend in secondary education to shift away from having textbooks and from utilizing online resources. that does not help when they get to nursing education because they have to start reading textbooks.

And remember those days when you had to highlight sections within the textbook? there's something to be said from that kind of tactile memory of, reading about acidosis and it was on the right side of the page. Absolutely. And I and that's important because you have to be able to apply information that you're gathering from textbooks and from your classroom, in order to, develop this critical thinking that is so important to a nurse. our instructors cannot single-handedly teach these students everything.

there has to be a self-directed nature of, I'm going to read this textbook so that I understand the material and the trend in secondary education. To shift away from that is, is very concerning./

  📍   When you think about the next five to 10 years at Jersey College, what is your vision? where are you gonna go from here and how are you gonna impact, nursing and healthcare and higher education, together with your leadership and with your students?

that's a great question because. We have never in our 20 year plus existence, grown for the sake of growth. We've grown when the opportunities presented themselves to develop relationships with hospital partners. We have a number of locations with a publicly traded, hospital, organization, uh, because they.

Recognize that this collaborative model with Jersey College can help them build a pipeline of nurses into the future. So when that opportunity presented itself, we certainly took it, but we did not decide to open up a campus in Dothan, Alabama just because Dothan Alabama was, the next target market for us.

So we wanna make sure that if we're growing it is with a purpose, not just for the sake of growth, which I think is perhaps, a wrong approach that many organizations have is let's just grow. Because if we're not growing, we're dying. So. We wanna make sure that there was, an intent and a purpose to it.

But for us at this point, our program goes up to the associate's degree, and we're currently pursuing additional accreditation so that we can offer, programs to the baccalaureate, masters, as well as doctoral level. In the future so that the 13,000 plus graduates that we have put out into the community, have a, a way to come back to Jersey College and continue their education toward becoming A BSN and then an MSN.

And let me tell you one of the greatest things that I see, and I was at one of our campuses yesterday and, and I saw two individuals that were instructors now at Jersey College that used to be students at Jersey College, which means they went elsewhere for their master's degree and now they're giving back.

Toward nursing education. That's what I wanna see. I wanna see our students and our graduates coming back and educating the next generation of nurses and I'd love to be able to offer that baccalaureate and master's level program to allow them to do that. That is a great vision. Absolutely. And there's gonna be so much more need that you can impact so many nursing careers at, different education levels by offering those types of degrees.

also curious. What advice you would give others because there are many higher ed leaders who are looking to potentially not start a brand new institution, although certainly that's the case too. But even within established institutions, folks who are looking to start a new college or even a new program that hasn't existed.

Sit in the past just to meet, workforce demand a little bit better, maybe regional demand a little bit better. And I think there's a lot of talk and maybe not a lot of action often because it just seems so overwhelmingly difficult and there's a lot of institutional inertia.

around founding new things. And so what advice would you give someone who is maybe listening and is thinking, man, our institution has been talking about starting X program, X Division, X College for a long time now. This interview is really inspiring me to push for us to take action. And, and what advice would you give them?

My advice is to make sure that you surround yourself with individuals that are smarter than you, and that have the will and the desire. To make a difference, to make an impact because they will be able to take your vision and your idea and help you execute it. You know, there's only 24 hours in a day if you are working by yourself, but when you expand that out to a team of, of individuals, now you're exponentially increasing the amount of time that you have in, you know, in a given day, in a given week, to be able to execute what it is that you wanna do.

So, you know, ideas are very cheap and very easy. Actually implementing them and accomplishing them. That's the hard part. And that takes financial resources to make sure that you are planning and that you have the, capital and the, working capital in order to sustain a project for a period of time.

Because it obviously takes a while until you can see a return. But more importantly than that, it's having the right individuals working with you that can share your vision.   My advice is surround yourself with people that are smarter than you. You'll be able to accomplish wherever you want.

And the people that you have had on your leadership team, it sounds like in many cases, have been there maybe since the beginning or shortly thereafter. So I'd also ask, what is your advice to retain people for decades as you have done? Because I'm sure that has a lot to do with the continued success that you've had as well.

Well, you know, Not just metaphorically thinking of your organizational, uh, as a family, but really treating everyone as your family goes a big way. and also recognizing the contribution that they're making so that they see the amount of effort and amount of energy that they were putting in, they're getting.

Back tenfold in the gratitude and the satisfaction, not just from you as the leader, but from, you know, everyone else in your organization, that becomes addictive. You know, that means that whatever you're putting into the world and whatever you're putting into the universe is coming back to you exponentially.

whether it's the gratitude that I express, whether it's. Sitting on stage at graduation and seeing the student that you were surprised would be able to graduate, walk across the stage, and now transform their life. To be able to recognize and see these things practically that you had your hand in is, is huge in retaining, the key people.

you can find positions in higher education that pay well, but we also see a lot of educators shift positions on a regular basis. and that's not because they're necessarily making substantially more money from one, Organization to another. It's because they're looking for something.

What is it that they're looking for? They wanna be part of something. They wanna know that what they're doing matters. and if you're a leader that can show somebody and spend your time and energy showing your team that what they're doing matters to them and they can see it, then it's much easier.

Thank you for sharing that. That's incredibly inspiring, I think will resonate with a lot of people as well. It's been incredible to have you on the show and hear your story of founding Jersey College, hear the impact that you all have been able to make and to see the very clear writing on the wall that you're gonna grow that impact exponentially, especially as you add those new degree paths into the mix as well.

Is there anything else that you'd like to share with listeners?

Just work hard and respect the people that put their heart and soul into your organization. Whether it's an educational institution or any institution. Just make sure you take care of your people. Absolutely. Hey, thank you so much for your time with us today. Can't wait to share this episode with the world.

Of course. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.