Called to care: From art teacher to nurse educator

Marianne Karpinski doesn't see her move from art education to nursing as a career change but rather as the next step in her lifelong mission to educate and care for others. Influenced by her father, an art teacher, she earned a bachelor's degree in art from Rowan University and started her career as a middle school teacher. While she enjoyed nurturing her students' creative talents, she felt restless.

Karpinski first sought more education, attaining supervisory and principal certificates and enrolling to earn her master's degree in art education. Still, she felt something was missing. After taking several courses in anatomy and physiology, Karpinski knew she wanted to pursue nursing.

"It always bothered me that I hadn't gone further into the sciences," she says. "When I took those classes, I thought, this is it. This is what I should have studied. I want to be a nurse."

Karpinski quickly mapped out her plan, starting with nursing prerequisite courses and then applying and being accepted into the nursing program at Rowan College at Burlington County (RCBC). As she balanced a full-time teaching job with the rigors of nursing school, another challenge emerged: the COVID-19 pandemic.

"We were just days away from starting clinicals when the world shut down in March 2020," Karpinski recalls. "It was frustrating, but I was determined. I completed my clinicals on weekends and attended night classes while still teaching art during the week."

Karpinski's dedication paid off when she graduated from RCBC with an Associate of Applied Science of Nursing degree. After that, she took the National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX), passed it, and became a registered nurse. In September 2022, she applied to and enrolled in the Rowan-Virtua Rita & Larry Salva School of Nursing & Health Professions (Salva SNHP) RN to BSN program, from which she graduated in May 2024. This experience not only reinforced her decision to become a nurse but also inspired her to pursue further education through the Master of Science in Nursing (MSN) Nurse Educator program.

"Many health care institutions are losing nurse educators because they're retiring. The average age of a nurse educator is in their 50s and you can't replenish that pipeline without new educators," says Mary Ellen Santucci, head of the Department of Nursing at Salva SNHP. "It's a catch-22 because we not only have a shortage of nurses, but we also have a shortage of nurse educators. So we need more nurses like Marianne to become educators so we can keep the pipeline functional."

Now enrolled in Salva SNHP's MSN Nurse Educator program, Karpinski is preparing for a career that will allow her to merge her teaching skills with her nursing expertise.

"At Rowan, I learned how I can be of service, not just in the hospital, but in the community. They taught us that we need to fight for our patients beyond the hospital walls," she says. "Now that I'm in the MSN Nurse Educator program, I hope I'll be able to serve the community as a nurse educator in the next four years."

While she continues her MSN studies, Karpinski plans to continue teaching art full-time. Her journey from art educator to nurse educator is proof that it's never too late to pursue a second passion-even when the first is still going strong.