After working in an intensive care unit for undernourished children in Haiti, Brandy Colson knew she wanted to be a nurse.

In Haiti, Colson and the other volunteers held and played with young patients, watching as the traumatized children who arrived at the unit with expressionless faces, began to smile and laugh.

“It was the enjoyment of seeing a smile from a child that you knew probably didn’t smile very much,” said Colson. “Seven of us went (on the program) and we all left every day from the ICU just glowing.”

A year and a half later, Colson, who has two children of her own, is more committed than ever to a career in healthcare, but she isn’t willing to sacrifice her role as a mother.

The Central Maine Community College Nursing Program at the LincolnHealth Education Center in Damariscotta, allows her to pursue her goal while still remaining fully engaged in her children’s lives.

The first collaboration of its kind in Maine, the CMCC/LH Nursing Program has graduated six classes of nurses using distance learning technology to allow students to take courses based at the Auburn Campus of CMCC while sitting in a classroom at the LincolnHealth Education Center in Damariscotta.

On-site instructors teach other classes and students receive much of their training in clinical settings on the Miles Campus of LincolnHealth in Damariscotta and MaineGeneral Medical Center in Augusta.

Each of the graduates from the Damariscotta program have passed their nursing licensure examination, making the program offered on the Damariscotta campus the only one in the state with a 100 percent passage rate.

The CMCC program is also the least expensive nursing program in Maine, which is important to Colson, and many other non-traditional students

“It has it all. Academically it (the CMCC program in Damariscotta) has a hundred percent passage rate with the (NCLEX – National Council Licensure Examination). It is affordable and it is close,” said Colson.

Cathy Cole, Regional Director of Educational Services for Lincoln County Healthcare and Pen Bay Medical Center, said the nursing school helps local people, often non-traditional students with families and roots in Midcoast Maine, access an affordable degree program close to home.

Students range in age from their early 20s to mid-50s. Many are older adults who are going to school for the first time or are returning to college to change careers. Many also have families.

“The nursing field offers one of the highest wages in Maine and it offers the opportunity for continued financial growth with experience and further study,” said Cole.

Cole said that LincolnHealth is also committed to the success of those students because many of them may someday be working for in a LincolnHealth facility.

Since 2010, ten graduates are employed in LincolnHealth and many more are working in nearby facilities, often in the MaineHealth system.