There is a national shortage of nurses and nurse educators, but thousands of qualified applicants do not enter nursing schools each year because of the limited number of nurse educators, clinical preceptors, and clinical sites. Schools of nursing employ adjunct faculty from clinical practice to fill faculty vacancies, but these expert clinicians lack the pedagogical preparation to effectively manage the classroom, engage in the scholarship of teaching and learning, and participate in research and scholarly work. A gap in the literature existed regarding the perceptions and interpretations of novice nurse educators who transitioned from clinical practice. The purpose of this basic qualitative inquiry was to uncover the experiences and perspectives of nurse educators and understand how they interpreted those experiences when they transitioned from expert clinicians to academic nurse educators. The instrument for data collection was face-to-face interviews. Benner's novice to expert theory was the theoretical framework. The population was nurse educators, and the nonprobability purposeful sample included two males and 13 females from varying age groups, different levels of nursing experience, and less than two years of formal teaching experience. Three themes emerged from the thematic analysis of the data: benefits, challenges, and adapting to change. The findings revealed the effectiveness of having a mentor, the challenges of inadequate preparation for the nurse educator role, the impact of the shortage of nurse faculty, the lack of a structured orientation system, and the change in professional identity from expert clinicians to novice nurse educators. An implication is for mentoring to be included in the transition process so that novice nurse educators could receive explicit preparation to operate in the educational milieu. Recommendations for future research include getting participants with nurse educator training, including more males in the sample, and designing consistent mentorship programs for novice educators. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]