My name is Laura McKay. I am the Program Director for Nursing at the College of Nursing and Public Health at South University.

The RN to Master of Science in Nursing program has five specializations: Family nurse practitioner, adult gerontology primary care nurse practitioner, nursing informatics, nurse administrator, and nurse educator. This is a program for nurses that are prepared at the associate's or diploma level who are seeking a master's degree, and at the end of the program, they earn both the Bachelor of Science in Nursing and the Master of Science in Nursing.

We want our students to be prepared to function in all areas of nursing and to be prepared in their specializations to meet the accreditation requirements and to meet the core outcomes. Those include things like leadership, scholarship, and clinical excellence.

Students who earn the degree, upon graduation, can function in a number of advanced nursing roles. Nurse practitioners are functioning as advanced clinicians. Nurse educators are able to teach at the bachelor's and often at the graduate level. Many of the students go on to pursue a doctorate so that they can teach at the graduate level in nursing. So the RN to MSN program is for that motivated student who has demonstrated academic excellence and wants to go directly into a graduate track.