23: THE DNP IN THE ACADEMIC ROLE ■ 517FACULTY
Recruiting qualified faculty who is comfortable working in the culture of an
academic institution can be challenging. Setting up a peer-mentoring program
can be a solution to developing faculty new to nursing education. Salaries for
clinicians and nurse administrators are traditionally higher than nursing faculty
so it can be hard to sell to make this career shift. Faculty who hold advanced
practice licenses find it challenging to maintain clinical practice and teach full
time; promoting innovative practice models may help with faculty retention as
well as provide clinical opportunities for students. In addition, it can be difficult
to harness the collective knowledge and the experience of faculty colleagues to
both honor and preserve nursing’s unique heritage while at the same time drive
innovative flexible and affordable curriculums.■ CASE STUDY: DNP Graduate as an Associate
Dean of Nursing (continued)■ ADVANCED EDUCATION FOR DNP CHAIRS: MINDING THE GAP
In the absence of formal educational pathways at the graduate level to prepare future
academic administrators, we must make do with what we have for the time being. Set
against the backdrop of the DNP essentials (AACN, 2006) and the experiential back-
grounds of DNP graduates, it may be that we are off to a good start. True, a DNP-
prepared graduate is probably not the best qualified to mentor research-track faculty
or doctoral students exclusively, however, perhaps a general background in broader
principles, such as mentoring, may be more valuable and more broadly applicable in
most instances. In schools of nursing that are not research extensive, a DNP-prepared
chair or dean might be well qualified for success having had formal preparation in
finance, organizational systems leadership, collaborative practice, evidence-based care,
and health policy for populations (AACN, 2006). These broader skills, which have been
identified as important for the future success of the health care system, may fare just
as well, or even improve on the traditional system of hiring administrators with back-
grounds in research and methodology. In research-extensive schools, there is often a
separate dean or associate dean whose charge is to shepherd the research mission of
the school. In these circumstances, perhaps a team of DNP- and PhD-prepared admin-
istrators could bring the kind of collaboration and synergy between the two terminal
degrees in nursing as has been advocated in recent literature (AACN, 2004; Murphy,
Warshawsky, & Mills, 2014).
Until such time that formal graduate education programs are created to prepare
academic administrators, consideration may be given to the current range of options
available for this purpose at the post-graduate level. A number of professional organiza-
tions and funding sources sponsor such programs including AACN (AACN Leadership
for Academic Nursing Program; AACN, 2016c), NLN (National League for Nursing
Leadership Programs, 2016; http://www.nln.org/professional-development-programs/
leadership-programs ), Sigma Theta Tau International Leadership Institute (2013; www
.nursingsociety.org/leadershipinstitute/nursefaculty/Pages/default.aspx ), and the