To compound the problem in Tennessee, half of our nursing faculty will be retiring within the next five years. The loss of half the faculty is of serious concern because graduate nursing education in Tennessee and across the United States has been focused for more than a decade on the production of family nurse practitioners who provide care for healthy people in primary care settings. These nurses do not have the skill set or knowledge base to practice and certainly not to teach students in acute care settings. Current faculty are retiring without any replacements in the pipeline. It would be optimistic to suggest that losing half of the faculty will result in losing only half of the graduates.

To respond to this critical need to prepare nursing educators and other masters prepared advanced practice nurses the six (6) Universities in the Tennessee Board of Regents (TBR) have collaborated to establish an online Masters of Science in Nursing program which is offered via the Regents Online Degree Program.

This program is designed to be offered solely online by all six TBR Universities. Each institution offers the same curriculum and all courses are taught by qualified faculty. The Consortium Model allows these universities to share their most valuable resource — faculty.

This process of collaboration among the six participating Universities to establish this educational program from idea to implementation will be presented. Curriculum development and faculty training will be highlighted. Plans for international collaboration will also be presented.