LANSING – When 22-year-old Tera Neirath saw the mail carrier walk up the driveway she could hardly contain her excitement.

“I almost cried. The mail lady walked to the door with a certified letter in her hand. I signed for it and tore it open,” the Highland Township resident said.

“My family was around me and I was so excited, in big bold letters it said ‘Congratulations, you’ve been accepted into the nursing program!’ It was a huge weight off my shoulders.”

After two long years and one failed attempt, Neirath finally made it into the associate’s degree in nursing program (ANP) at Oakland Community College.

Neirath, who graduated 11th in her class at Lakeland High School and maintained a 3.8 grade point average in her non-nursing college courses, was turned away her first time applying in 2006 due to limited space in the program.

Two few qualified faculty and too little clinical space for nursing students to practice their skills has severely hampered the statewide effort to combat a growing nurse shortage.

Janet Olszewski, director of the Department of Community Health, described the process as a bottleneck with a large number of applicants and few making it through to the field.

“We need to break the bottleneck and make is easier for students to get into these fields where there are huge shortages,” Olszewski said.

Jeanette Klemczak, the department’s chief nurse executive, said 4,400 qualified applicants have been turned away in Michigan over the last year because nursing education programs don’t have enough classroom faculty, clinical faculty or clinical sites.

By 2010 Michigan is expected to have a shortage of 7,000 registered nurses, and a shortage of 18,000 registered nurses by 2015, Klemczak said.

“Our biggest problem is trying to find and keep nursing faculty,” Klemczak said. Currently more than 50 percent of faculty at most of Michigan’s approximately 50 nursing schools are eligible to retire, according to statistics provided by Klemczak.

Another obstacle preventing schools from finding and keeping instructors is the salary cut it often requires. Klemczak said the average faculty member makes $15,000 to $20,000 less than staff nurses.

She said, “It’s not a good thing and we need to be able to work with higher education to get the funds necessary to increase the pay and make it more competitive with what they were making as a nurse.”

Margie Clark, the chair of the nursing career department and program director of the full-time nursing program at Lansing Community College, said she’ll have 140 students graduating in May.

The program at LCC averages 500 qualified applicants per year. Only 192 are accepted, and that number excludes the 25,000 students working on the prerequisites needed to apply to the program.

At LCC, the average nursing student is 29 or 30 years old. Most are female, but Clark said the demographics change depending where a program is located. For example 14 percent of the students enrolled in the LCC program are male. That’s 8 percent more than the national average.

One constant is the limited space available.

In 2007 and again in 2008, Gov. Jennifer Granholm stressed the importance of nursing in her annual State of the State Address.

As a result the Michigan Nursing Corps was created in 2007.

Klemczak, who’s in charge of the program, said it’s just now getting funding to support its goals, although not much money.

To efficiently run the program and produce quality nurses, the corps needs $15 million per year for three years. It has received only $1.5 million for 2008.

Klemczak said while the $1.5 million is greatly appreciated, lack of adequate funding will further delay the program’s ability to fully address the nursing shortage.

“It’s a hard thing to do in a state that’s struggling. We just keep getting deeper in the hole, but I think there is enough community and political support to solve the problems. It’s just going to take time,” Klemczak said.

Tom Bissonnette, the executive director of nursing practice and operations at the Michigan Nurses Association, said, “Recruitment of young men and women, as well as second-and third-career women and men, into the nursing profession is not the problem. Respect and retention is.”

Bissonnette said only 8 percent of nurses in Michigan have the master’s degree required to teach. He also said requiring clinical instructors to supervise 10 students in a clinical setting often leads to faculty burnout.

Oakland Community College’s Neirath said, “The whole process can be so frustrating. I was told when I applied the first time that over 600 other people had applied and only 216 were going to be accepted.

“I work at a hospital as a transporter, and it’s sad to see some of my co-workers get rejected this time around. I know how it feels to not get in - it’s a real struggle to wait.”

Neirath said the best advice she can give to future students is to get involved in the health field, “Work in a hospital and see how things work. Get advice from nurses on how they got in and what they did. Every little bit helps.”