Fast-track faculty

State funds will enable nursing program to ‘grow its own' teachers

TU's Department of Nursing is turning to self-help to augment its faculty and, eventually, to expand its role in alleviating Maryland's critical nurse shortage.

The department is planning to use part of a $384,000 appropriation from the Maryland General Assembly to enable some part-time faculty (and new applicants) to enroll in its M.S. in Nursing Education program,

the only one of its kind in the state.

"We want to grow our own faculty," says chairperson Jacquelyn Jordan. "We're targeting part-time staff with bachelor's degrees who by law are restricted to clinical sections. Stipends may help them through the 36-hour master's program and--with the acquisition of the credential needed to teach--onto the regular faculty."

Jordan says she may also recruit nurses who have taken two or three graduate-level courses and offer incentives to get them on a fast track to their M.S. degrees.  

The master's candidates would be given a stipend to teach one clinical ourse per semester, thus freeing a regular member of the faculty to teach graduate courses.

"It's a cyclical benefit," she says.

"There are so many nurses who want to teach, but who lack the needed master's degree. This is a way to take advantage of our unique program to enlarge and improve our faculty, which will at some point allow us to admit more students to the baccalaureate program."

The baccalaureate program enrolls 224 undergraduate nursing majors at the junior/senior level, with another 300 pre-nursing majors hoping to be admitted to the screened major.  

"At present we can admit only 56 new students per semester," Jordan explains, "and the process is becoming increasingly competitive. Lately we've turned away applicants with high GPAs because we don't have the faculty we need to teach them."

If the "growing our own" approach goes as planned, Jordan says the department may be able to admit more students as soon as fall 2006. And, of course, the hoped-for outcome will be more nurses in a state where an estimated 20,000 are desperately needed.   

"President Caret and Chip DiPaula [Maryland secretary of budget and management] really advocated for this funding," Jordan emphasizes. "Dr. Caret sees Towson's responsiveness to regional workforce needs as a key component of its Metropolitan University role.

"It's a big problem, and our department can't solve it alone," she says of the nursing shortage. "But we're committed to doing our part."

[back to main article index]