1. Many do; some schools expect or require that of faculty, some don't. I don't see how you can justify
not staying current with clinical practice, but there are still plenty of nursing faculty out there who haven't set foot in a clinical setting or laid hands on a real client in decades.
2. No one can give you a clear answer to that -- too many individual variables.
3. Sounds like your "3+" years of experience will include working part-time while you're in your MSN program, yes? Yes, you will be at a disadvantage (IMHO; someone else may come along here and tell you something different); some position postings I've seen specify a minimum of 2 years of (full-time) clinical practice (many specify more years, often five) but that's the
bare minimum to be considered qualified -- there will be other candidates for those positions with much more clinical experience. Turn the question around -- as a nursing student, how much experience do you want
your instructors to have? Do you want to be taught by someone fresh out of school, who is just a step or two ahead of where you are, or by seasoned, experience "pros"?
4. You're basically on the same academic schedule as the students, but that doesn't mean you don't have plenty of work to do during a lot of your "off" time (holidays, etc.). Teaching is one of those jobs that tends to expand to fill the available time -- it is definitely not a "9-5," "40 hours/week" job. As for having summers off, remember that that means you don't get
paid for the summer.
5. Financial assistance depends on the policies of the individual institution. Most will, at least, work with you on scheduling, etc., to make it possible for you continue on. Some do offer financial assistance (can't really assume that will always be the case, though.)
6. Every school I've had personal experience with has required a doctorate (or, for a really strong candidate in other ways who is
working on a doctorate) for tenure-track postiions. The people I've known in those positions expressed feeling really pressured and burdened by the school's requirements for research/publication/funding
plus teaching responsibilities, for what that's worth.
7. This, again, is so personal and highly variable that I'm only going to comment on the very obvious "true-ism" that we all know -- nearly
anyone teaching nursing could be making a lot more money practicing clinically.
8. Again, this is highly variable, esp. for new faculty. As one of my former program directors used to say cheerfully (when she was explaining to me that she needed me to teach something completely outside my sphere of expertise/experience), "Cross-training is the
heart of nursing education!!"
New faculty members, until they've built up some seniority in a department, often get the "left-over" assignments and program directors have to cover all the necessary teaching assignments with
someone (and I sympathize with that dilemma -- one of the many reasons I'd
never want an administrative position). Some program directors will work v. hard to accommodate your preferences and come up with reasonable compromises; some take the "a nurse is a nurse is a nurse" approach and just tell you what your assignment is; deal with it. And teaching assignments frequently vary from semester to semester -- you put a great deal of time and effort into developing a course one semester, look forward to having all that already done "the next time," and the next semester you're doing something different and starting from scratch on entirely different courses ... I would guess that it would be near impossible to find a program that would
guarantee you you'd only be teaching, for example, psych, and, even if you did, they would probably go back on that "guarantee" at some point.
I'm not trying to discourage you, just be honest about what I've seen and experienced in nursing education over quite a few years, but keep in mind how much talk you hear about the serious shortage of nursing educators -- there are
good reasons why so few nurses want to teach!
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Seeking Advice about becoming a Nurse Educator
