 On Monday, September 19, Southern West Virginia Community and Technical College will be holding a ribbon cutting at 11 a.m. to celebrate the recent nursing program upgrade. Southern received a grant of nearly one million dollars to go towards the program and are inviting any interested in pursuing or advancing their nursing career. It's going to be state-of-the-art. They were awarded close to or right at a million dollars by the governor. And we are not the only one. Several community college received this money to upgrade their facilities and expand their program. Because of this, not only are we upgrading equipment, but we were able to start offering a accelerated weekend program for people that already have degrees, whether they be in the medical field or bachelors or master's degrees that would like to come back and become nurses. My name is Aaron Crump, Chief Medical Officer at Pikeville Medical Center. The Heart and Vascular Institute, it's really an incredible program. Made incredible because of the providers, because of the technology, and because of the staff. We've truly become the leading provider of Heart and Vascular Services in Eastern Kentucky, and in fact what we do compares to anywhere in the nation. Pikeville Medical Center, when it comes to your heart, place your care in our hands. France is more than happy with the upgrade, as he claims Southern is now able to fully simulate a hospital environment. Those who wish to attend the ribbon cutting are more than welcome. They've basically recreated hospital scenarios in these rooms. Before we have a great nursing program to start with, we've long touted the fact that we're not only a great West Virginia school when it comes to nursing, but we're also one of the leaders across the nation when it comes to doing these types of things. So this extra funding and these extra upgrades are really going to be putting us above and beyond anywhere we have been before. We're just going to build on that success that we've already had so far. And this grand opening that we're having will be the first chance for the public, for local hospitals. We've invited dignitaries. The news media will be there for us to really show what Southern has to offer now through this nursing program. For Mountain Top News, I'm Nick Collum.