With the start of the spring 2026 semester, St. David’s School of Nursing, Texas State’s College of Health Professions, begins its second semester of furthering its students’ education close to the main campus, due to its partnership with CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Hospital — San Marcos.
The goal of the partnership is to keep students in San Marcos. Until last semester, all Texas State nursing students had to attend the Round Rock campus during their junior and senior years. Twenty of the 130 students in St. David’s School of Nursing who applied to stay in San Marcos currently attend class in the Santa Rosa Hospital facility and will begin their clinical rotations at this location in the spring.
The partnership also comes at a time when Texas faces a projected shortage of more than 57,000 registered nurses by 2036. Anna Gore, CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Hospital chief nursing officer, said the program will help build pipelines for the hospital and the community to allow the nurses to stay home.
“We hear a lot of the nurses leave to go to Houston, Dallas and even Austin,” Gore said. “To be able to provide a path to not only enhance and bring in more students means more nurses, which not only will help our facility but our community and the surrounding communities as well, even throughout the state.”
According to CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Hospital President Bob Honeycutt, discussion of this partnership began last March with Texas State President Kelly Damphousse.
“[Damphousse] mentioned that when students come to San Marcos, they really like San Marcos and they like to stay in San Marcos,” Honeycutt said. “It got our wheels moving to say, ‘Well, what can we do in order to help the nursing students stay here,’ and we looked at space and what the program would look like, and we found the space around the campus so we can offer that didactic learning experience here at the hospital including clinical rotations.”
Honeycutt and Damphousse decided they would start small with a 20-nurse cohort that began last semester and would return as seniors next fall while another class starts. Honeycutt said he hopes to have up to 50 students to start, with the end goal of reaching 100-120 students in San Marcos by building a nursing school on the hospital campus.
To keep students in San Marcos, CHRISTUS provided a leased space within its building where students receive hands-on experience. This includes a classroom, simulation lab and clinical rotations.
“It is really an honor and privilege to work with Texas State University and to work with the nursing program,” Honeycutt said. “It is a vital part of any growing and thriving community. Anything that CHRISTUS Santa Rosa can do to make that come to fruition in San Marcos, New Braunfels and San Antonio, we want to make sure we are able to do that.”
After nursing school applications began in spring 2025 for the coming fall and spring semesters, applicants were sent a survey asking if they would be interested in remaining in San Marcos for nursing school. All selected students are juniors and have the opportunity to continue their schooling in their senior year.
Sajani Yalamanchili, nursing junior, was chosen to remain in San Marcos with the CHRISTUS program. Yalamanchili said she had a preference to stay in San Marcos for school but was prepared to move to Round Rock as long as she was in nursing school.
Regarding the partnership, Yalamanchili said no one knew what would happen or that it would be the best choice for her. She said contrary to the talks about cliques and competition being a difficult part of nursing school, she doesn’t feel that way being among 20 of her peers.
“It truly is like a family we’ve made here,” Yalamanchili said. “I don’t feel any competition. I feel like we really are all trying to build each other up. We want everyone to get to the end. I eat, sleep and go out with these people 24/7. Every part of our lives is nursing school, and because we’re together in it, we’re very much helping each other with every aspect of it.”
Last fall, students visited Heart Hospital of Austin for two days to get their first idea of how the floor looks. In the classroom, they spent their time in the simulation lab using mannequins to learn techniques. This semester, they will be on various floors of the CHRISTUS hospital, getting hands-on, well-rounded experience with nurses and patients.
According to Cale Nedrow, a nursing junior, he and his peers receive more first-hand learning because they had access to a hospital environment, whereas students at the Round Rock campus spend more time in the classroom during their first semester.
Nedrow completed his pre-nursing degree at Texas State and said he loved the school so much that St. David’s was the only nursing school he applied to. When he applied to the university, he planned to move back home since he was close to Round Rock, though he said he would still come visit San Marcos due to his love for the city and his friends there. Since he could stay in San Marcos, Nedrow said he liked being exposed to many experiences, such as being in the hospital.
“There was one time we were in class … there was someone from a prison facility who was coming to get treatment,” Nedrow said. “I was like, ‘This kind of stuff is new. People don’t see that every day unless you’re a nurse or you’re giving the treatment.’ The promise we as nurses are making is that it doesn’t matter who you are … our goal is to treat our patients and make them better.”
