BC3 promotes Carney to lead growing health care division
Julia Carney has wanted to provide help to those stricken with health issues since she was a child. Now she is taking on a new role as dean of the college’s Shaffer School of Nursing and Allied Health.
Carney, of Zelienople, was inspired to work in health care as a 15-year-old witnessing the comfort given by a home hospice nurse to her cancer-stricken grandfather.
She will now lead a growing Butler County Community College division that in 2024 set graduation records in two high-priority-occupation programs.
She earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in nursing, worked 12 years at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, and spent the next dozen years advancing from within what is now BC3’s Shaffer School of Nursing and Allied Health.
The Ingram native will supervise a division whose enrollment has increased 86% since 2018 and that graduated 98 registered nursing students in May and 11 in a reestablished practical nursing program in December.
She succeeds Patty Annear, who in October was named director and chairwoman of Grove City College’s nursing program.
Carney also will manage higher-education and workforce partnerships and direct 32 full- or part-time faculty members who, this spring, are teaching 530 credential-seeking students.
“I’m excited, ready for the challenge,” said Carney, who was hired by BC3 in 2013 as a part-time clinical instructor and selected in 2020 as the Shaffer School of Nursing and Allied Health’s assistant dean of nursing.
“Every facet has prepared me to be in a position to give the best advice from the experiences I have had,” she said. “When someone will come in and say, ‘Hey Julia, x, y and z,’ I can say, ‘I know what you are talking about. Here’s what I’ve done in the past.’”
Carney also will manage a higher-education partnership with Grove City College, and workforce partnerships with Concordia Lutheran Ministries, Cabot and Penn Highlands Healthcare, DuBois.
Carney was instrumental in the design of nursing skills and simulation labs within the high-tech Victor K. Phillips Nursing and Allied Health Building that opened in August 2023 on BC3’s main campus in Butler Township.
“If members of the public were to go into many of the classrooms, they would think they went into a hospital,” said Belinda Richardson, BC3’s provost and vice president for academic affairs. “Julia used her years of clinical experience to support the dean and the design team in developing rooms that really mimic the experience that a student will have in a real hospital.”
Carney has also overseen students’ clinical rotations at health care facilities, developed curriculum and directs the college’s practical nursing program, Richardson said.
“As deep as her history, passion and commitment is for the field of nursing, she has a solid vision for working with the college in advancing the efforts of the allied health programs overall,” Richardson said.
Students in BC3’s Shaffer School of Nursing and Allied Health can develop the skills needed to enter the workforce immediately upon graduation.
In addition to registered nursing, the school offers associate-degree career programs in health care science — with 259 students this spring it is BC3’s most-populated program — and in physical therapist assistant and technical trades-massage therapy management.
In addition to practical nursing, the school offers a certificate program in medical coding and billing specialist. It also has a workplace certificate in massage therapy.
High-priority occupations are job categories that are in demand by employers, have higher skill needs and are likely to provide family-sustaining wages, according to the state Department of Labor & Industry. BC3’s physical therapist assistant and medical coding and billing specialist programs join registered and practical nursing in leading to current high-priority occupations in the region.
Carney also will direct the Shaffer School of Nursing and Allied Health’s registered nursing program at BC3 @ Brockway in Brockway, established in 2018 to address what the six-county North Central Workforce Development area identified as its highest-priority occupational need.
BC3 serves students in Armstrong, Butler, Clarion, Clearfield, Elk, Jefferson, Lawrence and Mercer counties.
Bill Foley is coordinator of news and media content at Butler County Community College.
