Susan Conrad, Framingham State College professor, is addressing the nursing shortage in her town of Framingham, MA. She is did this by creating a nurse educator certificate program to help transition licensed nurses to work as nurse educators, she has also launched online courses to make training accesible to nursing candidates that have busy schedules, finally, last year she developed a two year, part-time, Master of Science in Nursing program for the Massacheusetts Board of Higher Education.
One of the reasons for the nurse shortage is that there is a lack of qualified nursing instructors. This is exactly the area that needs to be tackled in America today. Susan Conrad is an example of doing just that. Actually, the reason that many people recommend nursing candidates to take online courses even if they have the time for offline instruction is that there is a shortage of good quality nursing teachers, online though you don't get the face to face time at least the material has been made to compensate for no instructor present.