What you’ll learn in this article…
- Shared faculty between EMU and JMU increases nursing program seats.
- JMU's Fast Flex offers an accelerated one-year hybrid BSN.
- Virginia's $151 million investment bolsters nursing faculty and facilities.
Virginia’s nursing shortage has reached 17,000 to 26,000 active RNs, a deficit that could double within a decade if faculty vacancies keep limiting program capacity. The bottleneck is not a lack of applicants; it’s that nurse educator demand far exceeds the supply of qualified faculty to teach them.
Eastern Mennonite University and James Madison University are now proving that shared faculty, targeted state funding, and innovative teaching strategies like JMU’s Fast Flex program can break that bottleneck. Their partnership adds salary support for faculty and expands clinical placements, directly attacking the educator gap.
The lesson: institutional collaboration can expand the educator pipeline faster than traditional solo efforts.
The Nursing Faculty Shortage: A Crisis Demanding Innovation
The gap between nursing demand and educational capacity isn’t closing, it’s deepening, and nursing faculty shortages are the heart of the problem. In the 2025-2026 academic year, U.S. nursing schools reported 1,588 budgeted faculty positions unfilled, representing a 7.2% vacancy rate nationwide1. When factoring in additional positions needed to meet student demand, that figure climbs to 9.6%, and nearly 30% of vacancies are classified as long-term posts that institutions have struggled to fill for more than a year1.
National Faculty Vacancy Trends
The American Association of Colleges of Nursing’s latest survey, covering over 80% of eligible programs, shows that the mean faculty vacancy rate over the past decade has hovered at 7.64%2. This persistent gap has a direct impact on the nursing student pipeline: in 2024 alone, over 80,000 qualified nursing school applicants were denied admission1, with insufficient faculty cited as a top reason. The problem is compounded by the fact that 80-84% of faculty positions require doctoral preparation, yet the pipeline of PhD-trained nurses entering academia remains thin1.
Regional Disparities and Virginia’s Pressure Point
Faculty shortages hit regions unevenly. The West faces the steepest vacancy rate at 9.8%, followed by the South (8.6%), the North Atlantic (7.8%), and the Midwest (5.6%)3. Virginia, situated in the South, is directly in the crosshairs: the state confronts a nursing deficit projected at 17,000 to 26,000 active RNs, a number that could double within the next decade. Without sharp capacity expansions in nursing education, these shortages will only worsen.
Why Traditional Hiring Falls Short
Simply posting more job ads and hoping for a surge of qualified applicants hasn’t worked, and won’t. Budget constraints limit how many full-time faculty positions universities can create, especially when state funding is tight. The academic path to a nursing PhD is long and expensive, and many clinicians opt for higher-paying practice roles instead of teaching. Meanwhile, clinical demands on working nurses leave little room for part-time or adjunct teaching. These structural barriers mean that scaling nursing education requires a different playbook.
That’s where nursing faculty shortage solutions, in the form of strategic university partnerships, come into focus. By pooling faculty, sharing clinical placement networks, and jointly pursuing state and federal funding, institutions can expand capacity faster than any one school could alone. The collaboration between Eastern Mennonite University and James Madison University shows one such model in action.
In 2025, U.S. nursing schools reported a 7.2% faculty vacancy rate, according to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing. Hundreds of unfilled educator positions are limiting the number of nurses programs can train, deepening the national shortage.
The EMU-JMU Partnership: A Blueprint for Collaborative Nursing Education
For decades, nursing schools tackled the faculty shortage in isolation, adding a few seats here and competing for clinical placements there. Eastern Mennonite University (EMU) and James Madison University (JMU) are now proving that collaboration, not competition, is a faster, more sustainable path to expanding nursing education.
A Shared Vision Forged in Crisis
The partnership gained public momentum on July 7, 2026, when U.S. Senator Tim Kaine visited EMU to celebrate federal funds directed to its STEM programs, including nursing. The event underscored a stark reality: Virginia faces a shortfall of 17,000 to 26,000 active RNs, a gap that could double in the next decade. Both institutions recognized that scaling up independently would not meet the demand. By aligning their efforts, EMU and JMU aim to increase program capacity, share faculty expertise, and make the most of unprecedented state and federal investment.
Funding as the Catalyst
Financial backing is turning the vision into action. EMU received approximately $1.4 million in federal support for its STEM and nursing programs. JMU secured nearly $150 million from the Virginia General Assembly to expand its healthcare offerings, including $115.3 million to build a larger Health and Behavioral Studies Building and $1 million specifically for nursing faculty salary support.1 This combined injection of funds allows the partners to hire additional educators, modernize facilities, and grow their collective enrollment.
A Systemic Model, Not Just a Check
Money alone cannot solve the shortage. The partnership establishes a systemic model built on shared faculty appointments, coordinated curricula, and integrated clinical placements. JMU’s Fast Flex pathway, a one-year BSN program delivered through evening, weekend, and summer hybrid instruction, exemplifies the strategy.1 Its expanded clinical experiences depend on direct partnerships with Augusta Health and Valley Health, a model that mirrors clinical partnership models for nursing education, ensuring students gain real-world training while hospitals benefit from a pipeline of future nurses. By pooling instructional resources and aligning faculty roles, the two universities are creating a replicable template for other regions confronting similar crises.
Questions to Ask Yourself
Funding the Future: Inside the $150M+ Investment in Nursing Education at JMU and EMU
State and federal investments are directly enabling the EMU-JMU partnership to hire nursing faculty, expand clinical facilities, and increase student capacity. The combined funding totals over $151 million, addressing the critical shortage and supporting innovative models like JMU's Fast Flex program.
Shared Faculty, Fast Flex, and Clinical Alliances: How the Model Expands Capacity
Expanding nursing education capacity once meant building more classrooms and hiring more full-time faculty, an approach increasingly unsustainable when PhD-prepared nurse educators are scarce. This scarcity challenges long-held nurse educator myths about scaling programs. The EMU-JMU partnership flips that model, demonstrating that shared resources, accelerated curricula, and strong clinical alliances can multiply the workforce pipeline without a proportional increase in faculty headcount.
Pooling PhD-Level Talent Through Shared Faculty
Instead of each institution struggling to recruit its own set of doctoral-level nurse educators, EMU and JMU pool their most specialized faculty through joint appointments and cross-listed courses. A professor with expertise in, say, nursing research or pathophysiology might teach one section at JMU and another at EMU during the same term, with coordinated scheduling that avoids overload. This approach stretches a limited pool of advanced-degree faculty across two programs, reducing each school’s per-program need for full-time hires while maintaining quality instruction. For smaller institutions like EMU, access to JMU’s deeper bench means students get exposure to faculty who might otherwise be unaffordable or unavailable.
The Fast Flex Accelerated BSN: One Year, Hybrid Delivery
JMU’s Fast Flex program compresses a bachelor’s in nursing into one calendar year across four consecutive semesters, using evening, weekend, and summer instruction in a hybrid format that draws on online nursing education best practices. That structure lets clinically experienced RNs and second-career students maintain employment while still progressing rapidly. The accelerated timeline, combined with careful clinical placements, allows JMU to increase its annual nursing graduate output from 226 to 256. Fast Flex does not just add seats; it changes the delivery model so that existing clinical instructors, simulation lab time, and classroom space are used more efficiently throughout the year.
Clinical Alliances That Unlock Capacity
Expanded clinical experiences depend on strong health-system relationships. The partnership includes agreements with Augusta Health and Valley Health, giving students access to diverse inpatient, outpatient, and community settings. These alliances help overcome one of the biggest bottlenecks in nursing education: finding enough quality preceptor sites and guaranteeing a smooth nursing student transition to clinicals. By coordinating placements jointly, EMU and JMU avoid competing for the same slots and can negotiate broader access for their combined student body.
Reducing the Per-Program Faculty Burden
Every innovation ties back to the faculty shortage. Shared faculty arrangements mean neither program must hire an entire parallel faculty corps. Accelerated cohorts like Fast Flex concentrate clinical hours into intensive schedules, making better use of part-time clinical instructors who might be working hospital shifts themselves. When state funding, including $1 million in salary support for JMU nursing faculty, targets these structural changes, the result is a model where scaling up does not require a linear increase in faculty hires. For nurse educators watching this experiment, the lesson is clear: creative staffing and scheduling can lift enrollment caps even when the PhD pipeline remains tight.
Overcoming Challenges in University Partnerships
University nursing partnerships bring together institutions with distinct cultures, funding streams, and administrative rhythms. The most common stumbling blocks are predictable: funding commitments that evaporate after initial grants, misaligned institutional missions that slow decision-making, and communication gaps that leave faculty and leaders working from different playbooks. The Eastern Mennonite University (EMU) and James Madison University (JMU) collaboration offers concrete strategies for turning these tensions into strengths.
Securing Financial Sustainability Beyond Startup Grants
Reliance on short-term grants is the single most volatile threat to any partnership. The EMU-JMU experience, buoyed by $1.4 million in federal STEM funds for EMU and nearly $150 million in Virginia state budget allocations for JMU, shows the value of stacking funding sources. But lasting models diversify further. Blended baseline funding from both academic institutions and health system partners is essential. For example, clinical instructor partner models4 often split a faculty member's full-time equivalent (FTE) between a health system (0.7 FTE) and the university (0.3 FTE), sharing salary costs. Joint grant-writing teams, like those emerging between EMU and JMU, can pursue federal, state, and philanthropic dollars simultaneously, and nursing education grant writing can help build a multi-year runway.
Bridging Cultural and Mission Differences
A private university with religious roots and a public research university will have different governance styles and timeframes. EMU's Anabaptist identity and JMU's public charter could easily create friction around curriculum values or work pace. Partnerships that last invest up front in what one global health education report calls a "scoping period"1 to build common understanding. In the Shenandoah Valley, regular joint planning committees and transparent memorandum of understanding (MOU) documents have helped EMU and JMU align on faculty commitments and resource sharing. One academic-practice partnerships compendium2 recommends designating a partnership liaison position to manage day-to-day cross-institutional communication, reducing the friction that arises when no one owns the collaboration.
Streamlining Administrative Alignment
Without clear governance, even well-funded partnerships stall. The SACA model3, developed for nursing education consortia, emphasizes intentional relationship building, shared outcome measures, and a joint leadership team with dedicated time for the partnership. EMU and JMU apply similar principles through joint committees that tackle everything from clinical placement agreements with Augusta Health and Valley Health to faculty workload definitions. One proven structure from shared faculty models5 defines roles as 40% teaching, 40% clinical practice, and 20% scholarship/service, including nurse-led research in education, giving both sides visibility into time use. Formal written agreements then codify these splits, backed by institutional leadership support that signals the partnership is a strategic priority, not a side project.
The $150 million state investment and $1.4 million federal grant jump-started JMU's nursing growth, but real resilience depends on recurring budget support and private backing. Nurse educators must push for endowments, alumni giving, and continuous grant-seeking to build funding pipelines that transcend any single appropriation, ensuring programs can adapt to future shortages and policy shifts.
Lessons for Other Institutions: Replicating the EMU-JMU Model
How can nursing schools duplicate the success of the EMU-JMU partnership in their own regions? The model demonstrates that collaboration, not competition, is the most effective strategy for expanding nursing program capacity. By focusing on shared resources, innovative funding mechanisms, and accelerated pathways, other institutions can adapt its core principles.
Identify a Complementary Partner
The EMU-JMU partnership paired a large public university with a robust nursing program (JMU) and a smaller private college (EMU). This asymmetry is deliberate, public institutions often have greater access to state funding and infrastructure, while private colleges may offer nimble governance and specialized missions. Look for a partner whose strengths offset your weaknesses: a community college with excess clinical simulation space, a large health system eager to co-develop faculty pipelines, or a regional university with established grant-writing capacity. The University of Kentucky College of Nursing's collaboration with Norton Healthcare illustrates a different but equally effective pairing, an academic center and a major health system. Through formal joint appointments, Advanced Practice Registered Nurses (APRNs) from Norton serve as adjunct faculty in UK's Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) program, ensuring course content stays grounded in real-time clinical practice.
Start Small with Shared Clinical Placements
Initiating a full-scale faculty-sharing agreement can be daunting. A practical first step is drafting a memorandum of understanding (MOU) specifically for clinical education slots; this formalizes the arrangement without requiring the legal and financial commitments of a merged faculty. For example, the private university-health system accelerated BSN partnership succeeded in part because it began with a focused joint workforce analysis to determine cohort size before expanding into curriculum co-design. Starting with clinical placements builds trust, clarifies logistical headaches, and demonstrates mutual benefit, exactly the foundation needed for subsequent shared-faculty models.
Design Shared Faculty Contracts and Pursue Joint Funding
Once clinical collaborations are established, institutions can design shared faculty contracts that allow educators to split their time between teaching and practice, or across two campuses.1 The University of Kentucky-Norton Healthcare model formalized this through a joint appointment structure governed by an MOU, ensuring dual-role faculty retained clinical currency while teaching graduate-level courses. Simultaneously, pursue combined state and federal funding. JMU's $1 million in faculty salary support from Virginia's budget and EMU's $1.4 million federal STEM grant demonstrate that legislators respond to cross-institutional coalitions. Crafting a unified funding request that highlights increased enrollment capacity and regional workforce impact can unlock resources that individual schools could not access alone.
Adapt to Local Political and Institutional Contexts
No two states have identical higher education governance, licensure requirements, or fiscal constraints. Virginia's legislative process differs from Kentucky's or Texas's, and the success of any partnership hinges on tailoring the model to local realities. Yet the underlying transferable elements remain clear: shared resources, innovative funding, and accelerated pathways. The private university ABSN partnership's emphasis on senior leadership engagement underscores that institutional buy-in is non-negotiable. Whether you are a public community college or a private liberal arts university, the first step is a candid internal assessment of your program's capacity gaps and a conversation with a potential partner about how to close them.
Frequently Asked Questions About University Nursing Partnerships
Drawing from the EMU-JMU collaboration and best practices in academic-practice partnerships, here are answers to common questions from nurse educators exploring shared faculty models, funding, and program expansion.
