A local hospital and student-run community organization are part of a movement to combat the “brain drain” in the Binghamton area. The brain drain, an increasingly common pattern of graduates fleeing the area after they’ve finished their degrees, is prominent in parts of central New York.

Lourdes, located on Riverside Drive in Binghamton, expects to hire between 400 and 450 new employees this year, a number that is larger than usual, according to Marjorie Cinti, the hospital’s nurse recruiter. The expansion will provide more room for a growing Youth Services Program, as well as additional operating and emergency rooms.

“As our employees get older, we need new people to fill positions,” she said. “We’re not growing by leaps and bounds, not doubling. But we’re steadily increasing.”

Cinti said that a significant number of the nurses at Lourdes come from Binghamton University’s Decker School of Nursing.

“We’ve had wonderful experiences with Decker nurses,” she said. “They do clinical and graduate work, and several of them go on for their master’s degree and become advanced practice nurses.”

Joyce Ferrario, dean of Decker School of Nursing, agrees that the relationship between Lourdes and Decker students is a strong one.

“They recruit our students heavily,” Ferrario said. “They sponsor a dinner for them at the end of year, and the Career Development Center does a career fair where a lot of hospitals come for the purpose of recruiting our students. Lourdes is one of the hospitals that comes.”

Besides the connection between BU students and Lourdes, efforts to encourage businesses to recruit locally for job openings also take the form of student-directed organizations.

Binghamton undergraduate Joshua Kay is the director of Catalysts for Intellectual Capital 20/20 (CIC 20/20), a student-run group focused on reversing the brain drain in this area.

“Reversing the brain drain is important for many reasons but it does have an effect on the area’s economy and desirability,” Kay said. “With regards to the Binghamton region, since there is a premier institution for higher education here, it makes sense to try to make students integrated as part of the community while we spend four or more years here.”

Kay is a teacher’s assistant for the CIC Leadership Institute (HARP 480P), a 4-credit course offered by the University. The course description states that the class aims to “familiarize students with the many economic facets of Greater Binghamton and match student leaders with community leaders from business, political and cultural sectors.”

The course includes a classroom component, where students work on academic projects pertinent to the community as a whole, according to Kay. There is also a community aspect, which involves going to local businesses like Lourdes to learn about their impact on the economy.

CIC 20/20’s Career Partnership Program is the group’s latest effort to help students make the most of their time at Binghamton and to keep them in the area after graduation.

“What we’re looking to do is match up students with mentors in the community,” Kay said. “We’re working with places like the Southern Tier Opportunity Coalition, and The Downtown Binghamton Business Association. These people are looking for ways to get involved with the University and we want to provide a way to get them to do it.”

CIC 20/20 is still looking for mentors, but more information will be available on its Web site — cic2020.org — as the semester progresses.