Cultivating Future Scholars

nursing role goes back over four decades with many of its original pioneers still employed in clinical and academic settings. however, the “graying of the workforce” has led many to question who will take over the reins of leadership both clinically and edu-cationally so that advance practice neonatal nursing maintains its scholarly foundation. emerging from the early hospital-based cer-tificate programs, as well as volunteer trans-port teams of the 1970s, it became apparent that the educational preparation for the evolving neonatal nurse practitioner (nnp) role needed to be based within a university setting. With the 1980s came national cer-tification of nnps through the national certification corporation (ncc) as well as the formation of their own specialty-specific organization, the national association of neonatal nurses, which further legiti-mized nnp education to be at the graduate level.