What you’ll learn in this article…
- Marquette launched Wisconsin's first four-year nursing degree in September 1936.
- One professor's 1990s NP curricula seeded a clinic lasting 20 years.
- Accreditors weigh pass rates and faculty retention, not anniversary years.
A nursing program that survives 90 years typically graduates well over 10,000 alumni, cycles through multiple deans, and rebuilds its curriculum three or four times over as practice standards shift. Those numbers are not trivia for a commemorative brochure; they are diagnostic. Nurse faculty retention, clinical placement pipelines, and how a program handles a founding leader's retirement predict whether it survives the next accreditation cycle better than any anniversary banner does.
Marquette University's College of Nursing, marking nine decades since its 1936 founding, gives program leaders and prospective faculty a documented arc to study rather than guess at.
The tension for practicing RNs eyeing a nurse educator career is timing: certify quickly and start teaching, or spend years pursuing a doctorate first. Programs with the strongest track records tend to have solved that same tradeoff for their own faculty pipelines long before any milestone year arrives.
A 90-Year Case Study: Curriculum Innovation at Marquette's College of Nursing
In September 1936, Marquette University opened the first four-year bachelor's degree program in nursing in Wisconsin, a launch that rested on nearly two decades of prior nurse teaching at the institution. That backstory matters for anyone studying nursing program development: the four-year degree was not a cold start but a credentialing upgrade layered onto existing clinical instruction. More than 10,000 living alumni now trace their preparation to that lineage, according to Marquette's 90th anniversary retrospective.
Faculty Initiative Built the Advanced Practice Tracks
The mid-1990s expansion is the clearest example of educator-driven curriculum design in advanced practice nursing tracks. Dr. Christine Shaw developed the Adult Nurse Practitioner curriculum and, with Dr. Mary Ann Lough, built the Acute Care Nurse Practitioner track. In the same window, the two faculty members opened the Marquette Clinic for Women and Children, a faculty-run practice site that operated for more than 20 years. The pairing is instructive: new NP tracks launched alongside a clinical site the faculty themselves controlled, which meant precepted hours, patient populations, and learning objectives could be aligned without negotiating access from an outside health system.
A Single Faculty Member Can Seed a Sustained Global Site
Dr. Darlene Weis started a one-month Community Health Practicum in Piura, Peru, in 2008. The rotation ran through 2016, giving successive student cohorts a structured global health experience that outlived its founding trip. Program leaders should note the pattern: durable international placements usually begin as one faculty member's relationship, then get institutionalized through course numbering, learning contracts, and a rotating faculty lead.
Longevity Compounds Curricular Expertise
Dr. Shaw graduated from Marquette in 1972, joined the faculty in 1976, and retired in 2021 after 43 years of teaching. Dr. Richard Fehring's affiliation with the college spans more than 48 years as student, faculty, and emeritus professor; the natural family planning program he directed received an Edge Runner award from the American Academy of Nursing in 2022. Careers of that length let a single educator design a curriculum, teach it through multiple accreditation cycles, mentor the faculty who will inherit it, and see the graduates return as preceptors. That compounding effect, more than any single innovation, is what a 90-year program offers as a case study.
What Are the Milestones to Become a Nurse Educator?
The real decision most clinical nurses face when planning how to become a nurse educator is not whether to teach, but how far to invest before they step in front of students: certify first and enter the classroom quickly, or push straight through to a doctorate and qualify for full-time faculty and leadership. Both paths are valid, and the right one depends on how much time and tuition you can commit against how far you want to advance.
The Core Progression
The foundation is an active, unrestricted RN license paired with real clinical expertise. You cannot teach a specialty you have not practiced, so bedside years matter as much as coursework. From there the ladder typically runs: earn a BSN if you do not already hold one, complete an MSN with a nurse educator focus, then decide between certification, doctoral study, or both.
MSN Nurse Educator programs vary considerably. Credit loads commonly run from 30 to 42 credits,23 and full-time students often finish in roughly 12 to 24 months,46 with part-time and online formats stretching longer. There is no national standard for nurse educator practicum requirements, so compare carefully: some schools count only the teaching practicum in their clinical requirement, while others fold in direct-care and immersion hours. Reported practicum totals range widely, from about 135 hours at some programs to 500 at others,45 which is why credit counts alone rarely tell the full story.
Certification and Competency Benchmarks
The Certified Nurse Educator (CNE) credential from the National League for Nursing signals teaching competence beyond your degree. Eligibility generally requires an active RN license plus a graduate degree in nursing; a BSN pathway also exists for those with at least two years of nurse educator experience in the prior five years.1 Certification runs on a five-year cycle, and recent certificants renewing in 2026 or later typically need 75 contact hours.1 Confirm the exact renewal formula in the current NLN handbook before you plan.
Think in competencies, not just credentials: demonstrated clinical mastery, a supervised teaching practicum, hands-on curriculum design, and early scholarship. Each stage should leave you more capable, not just more credentialed.
When a Doctorate Matters
A DNP or PhD becomes relevant when you target tenure track nursing faculty roles, program direction, or academic leadership. If your goal is part-time clinical teaching, an MSN and CNE may suffice; if you aim to lead, plan for doctoral study early.
The Clinical-To-Academic Career Ladder, Step by Step
Anniversaries make the long arc of a teaching career visible, but the rungs are concrete. Here is the credentialing ladder most nurses climb from bedside to department leadership, with the compensation signals that come with each stage. Treat the figures as national averages, not offers: they blend institution types, regions, and contract lengths.
One faculty member's decision to build a curriculum and open a clinic can shape how a program serves patients for twenty years.
Curriculum Evolution: How Veteran Programs Adapt Decade to Decade
Curriculum evolution is the slow, deliberate replacement of a nursing education curriculum and the clinical sites where it is taught, driven by real shifts in practice rather than annual committee tinkering. Marquette's 90-year arc shows the pattern clearly: a four-year degree launched in 1936, Adult and Acute Care nurse practitioner tracks added in the mid-1990s, and community and global practicum sites layered on afterward. Each addition arrived a generation apart, not a semester apart, because each responded to something structural changing in the profession.
Three Triggers, Not One Calendar
Veteran programs tend to revise curriculum around three recurring triggers rather than a fixed review cycle.
- Scope of practice shifts: When state boards or national bodies expand what nurses are licensed to do, programs that already have faculty tracking those changes can build new tracks quickly, the way NP curricula followed expanding advanced practice authority.
- Clinical placement availability: A faculty member securing a grant, a partnership, or a clinic site (as happened with a faculty-run women's and children's clinic that ran over two decades) can open a teaching capacity that didn't exist before, and the curriculum expands to use it.
- Faculty specialization: When an individual educator builds deep expertise, whether in nurse-led research, natural family planning or international community health, that specialty often becomes a permanent curricular thread long after the original champion retires.
Compressing the Timeline
Newer programs do not need ninety years to reach maturity. By studying which established programs added NP tracks, global practicums, or specialty clinics, and roughly when scope-of-practice or placement conditions made those additions viable, a new program can sequence its own growth deliberately instead of stumbling through the same trial-and-error decades.
Program sustainability lives in this pattern. Accreditation status confirms a program meets a floor, not that it is growing. A program that renews its self-study every eight years but never updates course content or curriculum mapping for NGN to match current practice is stagnating in plain sight, regardless of how clean its compliance record looks.
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Preserving Institutional Knowledge as Faculty Turn Over
Every program weighs the same tradeoff: hold onto a small number of long-tenured faculty who carry decades of curriculum decisions in their heads, or accept that turnover is inevitable and build systems to capture what they know before they leave. A 43-year career like Dr. Christine Shaw's at Marquette, or Dr. Richard Fehring's involvement spanning more than 48 years, is increasingly the exception. When those educators retire, they take with them the reasoning behind why a course sequence was built a certain way, which clinical partners are reliable, and how a track like Acute Care NP came to be.
The Scale of the Problem
The pressure is national. AACN's most recent survey on the nursing faculty shortage reported a 7.2% vacancy rate across 1,075 schools, representing 1,588 unfilled full-time positions. That figure edged down from 7.9% the prior year, but the gap remains large: schools said they needed roughly 150 additional faculty positions to meet student demand, and 80.8% of vacancies required a doctoral degree. Fewer qualified candidates competing for those roles means each departure is harder to backfill, and institutional memory walks out the door faster than it can be replaced.
Practical Knowledge-Transfer Models
Nursing faculty retention strategies work best when they double as knowledge-transfer strategies. A few models are worth adopting deliberately:
- Structured mentoring pairs: Assign a newer faculty member to a veteran early, with defined checkpoints rather than an informal open door.
- Phased retirement with teaching handoff: Let a retiring educator step down gradually while co-teaching the courses they built, so a successor absorbs the rationale, not just the syllabus.
- Recorded oral histories: Capture short interviews on why key curriculum decisions were made, which clinical placements succeeded or failed, and how community partnerships (like Marquette's faculty-run clinic) were negotiated.
- Co-teaching before transition: Run a full term with both educators in the room before the senior faculty member fully exits.
Succession Planning for Leadership
The same logic applies to department chairs and program directors. Marquette's dean lineage, from Sister Berenice Beck through Dr. Guttormson, reflects continuity that no organization gets by accident. Identify likely successors two to three years out, involve them in budget and accreditation cycles, and document the informal relationships that keep a program running. Succession planning is retention insurance.
Since launching Wisconsin's first four-year bachelor's degree in nursing in 1936, Marquette University's College of Nursing has produced more than 10,000 living alumni, according to a Marquette University news feature marking the program's 90th anniversary.
Accreditation and Sustainability Metrics That Signal a Healthy Program
Anniversary celebrations make good photographs, but accreditors measure sustainability with numbers and calendars. Whether your program answers to the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education (CCNE) or the Accreditation Commission for Education in Nursing (ACEN), the benchmarks below are the ones faculty should be able to recite from memory. Track them continuously rather than scrambling during a self-study year, and note that CCNE's 2026 Standards take effect for evaluations hosted after January 1, 2027.
| Metric | CCNE Benchmark | ACEN Benchmark |
|---|---|---|
| Program completion rate | 70% or higher for the most recent calendar year; alternatively, 70% or higher across the three most recent calendar years, or 70% or higher for the most recent calendar year after excluding identified factors such as family obligations, relocation, financial barriers, or a decision to change major or transfer | Not specified in the sources reviewed here |
| Licensure examination pass rate | 80% or higher for each campus, site, and track, using one permitted measure: first-time takers in the most recent calendar year, all takers in the most recent calendar year, first-time takers across the three most recent calendar years, or all takers across the three most recent calendar years | At least one of the following, based on total test-takers: 80% or greater for all first-time test-takers; 80% or greater for first-time test-takers and repeaters combined; or at or above the national or territorial mean for the program type. The most recent annual pass rate or the mean of the three most recent years may be used |
| Reaccreditation and review interval | On-site evaluation scheduled at least one year in advance of the accreditation term in which the program wishes to host the visit | Continuing accreditation every 8 years, with the first continuing review 5 years after initial accreditation is granted |
| Review scheduling windows | Programs hosting an on-site evaluation after January 1, 2027 are assessed under the CCNE 2026 Standards | Two cycles annually: Fall Cycle running July 1 through December 31, and Spring Cycle running January 1 through June 30 |
| Site visit outcome | On-site evaluation conducted by peer evaluators as part of the accreditation review process | The site visit follows the accreditation application process; peer evaluators document their assessment and accreditation recommendation in the Site Visit Report |
Accreditation benchmarks, licensure pass rates, and faculty retention define a nursing program's vitality more than the number of years it has existed.
Planning a Milestone Event That Advances Recruitment, Alumni Ties, and Fundraising
An anniversary is only worth the planning hours if it moves program goals forward. Treat the following as a working checklist, and start it roughly 18 months out.
- Audit and refresh the alumni database a full year aheadBad addresses are the silent killer of anniversary outreach. Start reconciling records, verifying emails, and reconnecting with lapsed graduates at least 12 months before the date so invitations and giving appeals actually land.
- Capture oral histories before they retire out the doorLong-tenured faculty and early graduates carry curriculum decisions, clinical partnership origins, and teaching philosophy that exist nowhere in writing. A 40-plus-year faculty career holds the reasoning behind decades of program change. Record interviews on video while those voices are still reachable.
- Launch a named scholarship or endowment in the anniversary yearMilestone years give donors a reason to act now. Tie the campaign to something specific, a faculty mentoring fund, a simulation upgrade, or a scholarship honoring a founding dean, rather than to general support.
- Design the signature event as a recruitment touchpointInvite prospective graduate students and practicing RNs weighing a move into teaching. A symposium with faculty presenting current curriculum work recruits better than a reunion dinner ever will.
- Build a digital timeline or short documentaryThe event lasts one evening; a well-produced timeline or documentary keeps working for admissions, alumni relations, and accreditation self-studies for years.
- Honor clinical and community partners, not just alumniLong-running practicum sites, faculty-run clinics, and hospital partners built your students' learning capacity. Name them from the podium, and renew those relationships while everyone is in the room.
Lessons Veteran Programs Offer New and Growing Programs
Newer nursing programs often face a false choice: chase visibility and rankings now, or build slowly toward the kind of depth that takes decades to show up in outcomes. The Marquette case suggests the tension is overstated. Programs that last are not simply old. They are built, deliberately, by faculty who start clinics, write curricula, mentor successors, and document what works so the next generation does not restart from zero.
A Short Checklist for Programs Under 20 Years Old
If your program is still establishing its identity, three moves compound over time better than almost anything else:
- Anchor one flagship clinical partnership for the long haul: The Marquette Clinic for Women and Children , an early academic-clinical partnership model , ran more than 20 years and produced generations of advanced practice graduates. Pick one site (a federally qualified health center, a school district, a rural hospital) and invest faculty time there for a decade or more, not a single grant cycle.
- Formalize mentoring pairings before senior faculty retire: Do not wait for a retirement announcement. Assign each mid-career faculty member a named senior partner, with scheduled co-teaching, joint committee work, and written handoff notes on courses they own.
- Track accreditation outcome metrics every year, not every self-study: NCLEX pass rates, certification pass rates, completion, and employment should sit on a dashboard reviewed each fall, so trends surface early instead of during a scramble two years before site visit.
The Same Logic Applies to Your Career
Aspiring nurse educators sometimes read a 90-year institutional history and conclude it has nothing to do with their next credential. It does. The milestone path (MSN, CNE certification, doctoral study, tenure or clinical track advancement) is the individual version of the same staged growth that keeps programs healthy. Plan each next step on the nurse educator education path before the previous one ends.
Program sustainability and career sustainability rest on the same discipline: planned transitions rather than improvisation. A department that names its next course lead two years out looks a lot like a nurse educator who enrolls in doctoral coursework before the promotion clock starts. Neither is glamorous. Both are how the work continues.
