UW’s Fay W. Whitney School of Nursing Program Given Top Rankings by National Licensure Report

There are many ways to examine the success of an academic program, including student evaluations and enrollment numbers.

However, in addition to those factors, the University of Wyoming’s Fay W. Whitney School of Nursing this year can point to a 100 percent pass rate for Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) graduates who took the National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX) for registered nurses (RN).

The pass rate information -- plus a number of other factors -- were considered by the 2024-25 NCLEX-RN Program Report.

As a result of the successful nursing graduates’ pass rate of the NCLEX, UW’s nursing school’s Basic BSN program has been ranked No. 1 in RN programs in Wyoming as well as first among 1,124 BSN programs and first among 2,228 RN programs across the country.

The data used for analytics in determining these ratings comes from Mountain Measurement Inc. The consulting company, located in Portland, Ore., is the contracted vendor that supplies NCLEX analytic reports to programs such as UW’s Basic BSN, subscribing to obtain their performance reports of students who take the exam.

The Basic BSN program is an on-campus BSN option for students who want to become registered nurses and earn the BSN degree. The school accepts up to 40 students into the nursing major each year.

Sherrill Smith, dean of the Fay W. Whitney School of Nursing in UW’s College of Health Sciences, credits the success of the Basic BSN graduates’ pass rate because of the extensive work of school faculty in helping students prepare for the exam.

“Our faculty have been working very hard to prepare our graduates for the new NCLEX-RN exam that started in 2023,” Smith says. “It is very exciting to see the impact of their work to prepare our students for practice as registered nurses.”

The analytic report allows the school to see how students performed on the four categories of the NCLEX-RN exam -- safe and effective care; health promotion and maintenance; psychosocial integrity; and physiological integrity.

The report allows faculty to see areas where students do well and where students struggled to help identify areas for program improvement.

Carrie Barr, BSN programs director and a UW associate lecturer, sees the importance of having not only excellent faculty, but an entire school devoted to helping students.

“We have phenomenal faculty who go above and beyond to ensure that our students’ success both in clinical practice and on the NCLEX-RN exam,” Barr says. “Our faculty, staff and students are the best of the best and that shows in our program’s No. 1 ranking.”

To learn more about the Fay W. Whitney School of Nursing’s Basic BSN program click here.

About the University of Wyoming College of Health Sciences

UW’s College of Health Sciences trains health and wellness professionals and researchers in a wide variety of disciplines, including medicine, nursing, pharmacy, speech-language pathology, social work, kinesiology, public health, health administration and disability studies. The college also oversees residency and fellowship programs in Casper and Cheyenne, as well as operating a speech/hearing clinic in Laramie and primary care clinics in Laramie, Casper and Cheyenne.

With more than 1,600 undergraduate, graduate and professional students, the college is dedicated to training the health and wellness workforce of Wyoming and conducting high-quality research and community engagement, with a particular focus on rural and frontier populations.