The Kentucky Board of Nursing administers the Nursing Incentive Scholarship Fund (NISF) that is established by KRS 314.025 and regulated under 201 KAR 20:390 and provides scholarships to Kentucky residents attending an approved prelicensure or graduate nursing program. The NISF scholarship was created to address the nursing workforce needs throughout the Commonwealth and to give preferential assistance to financially-needy Kentucky residents, licensed nurses pursuing further nursing education, and prelicensure nursing students that have already completed part of a nursing program.
The academic year runs from July 1st through June 30th , and each NISF scholarship award period runs concurrent to the academic year. The application submission period is from January 1st through June 8th each year. All NISF scholarship applicants must be enrolled in nursing courses during the award period that starts July 1st of the year that the application is submitted. Students that have been accepted into a nursing program but have not yet started nursing courses are not eligible for the scholarship. Applicants scheduled to graduate the same year that the NISF application is submitted must be able to complete 6 prelicensure credit hours or 4.5 graduate credit hours between November 1 st and December 31st of that year. Students not scheduled to graduate by December 31st of the application submission year must be able to complete a minimum of 12 prelicensure credit hours or 9 graduate credit hours during the award period. Students graduating from their nursing program before November of the award period are not eligible for the scholarship.
NISF recipients are selected annually by the Board using the criteria specified in 201 KAR 20:390. Scholarship awards of $1,500 per academic semester or $3,000 per academic year are issued each fall. Scholarship awards are not required to be directly applied to tuition or books – award recipients may use the funds for cost of living expenses, such as gas, childcare, food, bills, etc.
After graduation, each NISF scholarship recipient is required to work full-time (or equivalent) as a nurse in Kentucky for six months for every academic semester funded by the scholarship. If a recipient graduates from a nursing program and chooses to continue their nursing education, they are eligible to apply for a new scholarship during the submission period of the year they will begin the new program.
