RHINELANDER - Traditionally colleges across the country enroll more women in certain fields and more men in others.

At Nicolet College in Rhinelander 5 out of 30 nursing students are men and that's apparently a larger percentage than usual.

One of man looking to be accepted into the program says your sex shouldn't count when you choose a career, just your personality.

David Hapka is a carpenter. He's also a nursing student at Nicolet College in Rhinelander. He says there's one, big reason he's making this career shift, "The downturn in the economy."

Hapka says while the need for carpenters has fallen, the need for good nurses has not. He says he's well on his way to becoming a good nurse, but he does stand out a little in his classes. He says, "It's interesting, because there's very few men involved in the program here."

"We have normally had, probably 98 percent women in the program," says Lenore Mangles the Dean of Health Occupations at Nicolet. She goes on to say, "I think nursing was kind of the female role and that's really changed for women, I think it's also changed for men."

According to Mangles, Nicolet is seeing a slight rise in male nursing students which, she says, is a good thing, "It's nice to have a male, kind of levels the playing field when it comes to male patients."

Hapka and Mangles say certain patients are just likely to be more comfortable with certain nurses.

"Men are, you know, maybe better at some things than women and women are better at some things than men," says Hapka.

Mangles says it's important for Nicolet to encourage men and women both to look outside of the box when it comes to career choices. She and Hapka say success in any field has nothing to do with gender.

"Lots of different walks of life have come back to school as nurses and most of them have done really well," says Mangles.

"I like interacting with the patients and getting to know people and I think it fits my personality," says Hapka.

Hapka and Mangles say to be a good nurse you have to be caring, intelligent and an independent, critical thinker. They say it's about who you are, not about who "tradition" tells you you should be.

Mangles says another reason men might want to look into nursing is an impending, national nursing shortage.

She says almost half of nurses are set to retire within the next 15 years.

Nicolet is holding a forum to get men interested in health careers on Wednesday April 28th from 5 to 7 pm at the Lake Julia Campus.