Book excerpt: ABSTRACT: The nation is witnessing a teacher shortage that is requiring school districts to find creative strategies and incentives to recruit competent and qualified individuals to fill the void. It has been reported that the teaching profession is no longer attractive. Throughout the nation, the production of teachers varies and some states continue to produce more teachers than they need while others continue to struggle. Many states continue to make attempts to try to provide representation that matches their student demographics. These efforts continue to be taxing because the nation's public schools show that the majority of teachers are White (87%) and female (74%). This nonexperimental descriptive research design was used to identify factors that have influenced North Carolina Teaching Fellows to enter the teaching profession. The North Carolina Teaching Fellows is one of the most successful recruiting strategies/incentives known throughout the nation. The results of this study indicate that females were influenced more by intrinsic factors. Altruistic factors were dominant in participants' selection of their top five ranked factors that influenced them to enter the teaching profession. Extrinsic factors had little influence in the participants' decision to enter the teaching profession. There were no extrinsic factors chosen among the top five rankings by participants. The study also revealed that effective school system strategies/incentives that influenced the participants varied greatly. Monetary strategies such as signing bonuses were not as influential to participants.