Nursing student Kristen Lee, right, practices a lung assessment on Claire Draffin as Curlissa Mapp, a professor at Georgia Baptist School of Nursing at Mercer University, watches.

Despite a national nursing educator shortage, nurses are still becoming teachers and finding it a challenging and rewarding profession.

Sitting in nursing school, Curlissa Mapp, RN, MSN, knew she wanted to be an educator someday. After graduating in 1994, she became an oncology nurse and later a home health nurse. When she saw the ad for the Georgia Baptist School of Nursing at Mercer University nurse educator program, she knew the time had come.

"I knew this is where I was supposed to be," Mapp said. "I come from a long line of educators and I'm an encourager. I wanted to inspire others to love nursing and to be the best they can be."

Mapp got financial assistance through the Georgia Nursing Faculty Scholarship Program and felt that everything fell in place afterwards.

"Each class, I learned more about what it means to be a scholar and teacher," she said. "I never expected to write so much - two grants and a thesis on patients living with prostate cancer - but I feel like the program prepared me to understand and prepare material for adult learners."

Still working part time at Emory Healthcare, Mapp's full-time job now is teaching for Georgia Baptist School of Nursing, "and that's pretty exciting," she said.

Mapp teaches Adult Health II, a clinical group of the oncology section, guest lectures about chemotherapy in the pharmacology class and supervises sophomore students doing health assessments in the lab.

She's wearing a lot of hats, and putting all her newly acquired education skills to work. "You can't just read from your slides anymore. Today's classrooms are interactive and students are consumers," she said.

"They want to know everything right now and they all know PowerPoint," agreed Donna Chambers, BSN, FNP, who has been teaching in Kennesaw State University's nursing program for a year. Chambers had always enjoyed teaching clinical students and took the opportunity to become a full-time professor last year.

"Financially, I took a cut in pay and still work two other jobs - one as a critical care nurse at Piedmont [Hospital] - to make ends meet, but I hope to stick with teaching. I would love to get my doctorate in a cardiovascular specialty," Chambers said.

What has surprised her more than anything is the load that educators carry.

"You need different skills in teaching than you do in nursing and the preparation takes so much time," she said. "I'm learning what it takes to be a teacher . . . how to present something in a creative way that will help them learn it. I love seeing the excitement in students and I have a lot more respect for nurse educators now."

Chambers talks excitedly about taking her cardiovascular specialty students to Piedmont Hospital to see open heart surgery, and realistically about learning how to educate. Equipped with excellent clinical skills and excited about an opportunity to do research, she is still learning her way around academe.

"I had no idea there was so much involved, but our new mentorship program is really going to help," she said.

Both nurses said that faculty mentoring and administrative support is helping them make the transition into educators. "I feel good that I'm meeting a need and that I'm on my way to a long career," Mapp said.