NUR 660: the Nurse Educator internship

01NUR 660 then and now

The course number and hour split trace to SAU's 2023-24 Graduate Catalog, since newer catalogs sit behind a verification screen. The track has changed since then, with NUR 780B added alongside the internship; your Brightspace course list and your advisor are the current word.

02Two kinds of internship hours

In the 2023-24 catalog the internship split its 150 hours in two. Fifty were individually supervised field experience in direct care. The other 100 were in a nursing education setting, which the certificate section of the same catalog calls an academic setting.

That wording difference is worth raising. A school of nursing is plainly an academic setting; a hospital's staff education department is education but not academic. SAU does not say which settings count for the 100 hours, what teaching tasks are expected, or who may supervise them.

The 50 direct-care hours raise a second question, covered in the next section: whether they still exist now that the track also has a 125-hour direct-care practicum.

03How NUR 660 relates to NUR 780B

When the 2023-24 catalog was written, NUR 660 was the Nurse Educator track's only field course. SAU's current Nurse Educator pages add NUR 780B (125 direct-care hours) and give the track's total as 125 clinical hours while still showing NUR 660 with no hours attached.

SAU's pages do not explain how the two fit together. The Nurse Educator certificate page lists 150 internship hours and also names NUR 780B. The RN-to-MSN Nurse Educator page gives 225 clinical hours while the tuition page gives 125. Only SAU can reconcile those figures for you.

Put three questions to your advisor or to the Director of DNP and MSN-EDU/MSN-MBA Programs: how many internship hours NUR 660 carries for your cohort, whether any of them are direct care, and whether they count toward the program's clinical total. The NUR 780B page covers the practicum, and the clinical hours page shows SAU's figures together.

04Who finds the site and who supervises

No SAU page says who arranges the internship site. SAU's FAQ puts preceptor choice in the student's hands, in the student's home state, and none of the Nurse Educator pages mentions placement support or a partner network, so plan to find the education setting yourself.

The supervisor is also undefined. NUR 780B names four kinds of preceptor, but that list belongs to the practicum; SAU publishes no qualification rule for whoever supervises the internship's education hours. Before you ask a nurse educator to take you on, find out from faculty what they need to know about that person: degree, role, teaching experience or anything else.

Once the answers are in, a clear request helps. Tell the prospective supervisor the hour count, the semester, the project proposal, and what SAU's faculty will send them.

05Prerequisites and timing

The 2023-24 catalog puts NUR 660 behind the same four courses as every practicum: NUR 602 and its residency NUR 602R, plus NUR 612 and NUR 618. SAU's current certificate page adds the education sequence: NUR 625 (Educational Theory and Curriculum Design) and NUR 635 (Instructional Strategies), along with NUR 551, 602, 612 and 618, with NUR 635 following NUR 625.

That makes the internship one of the last courses in the track, which leaves time to line up the site during the education courses. RN-to-MSN students reach it later still, after the BSN phase and a third-year residency. The catalog also describes the Nurse Educator program as preparing graduates for the NLN Certified Nurse Educator exam. The prerequisites page has the full course chain.

06Planning the internship

In its certificate section, the 2023-24 catalog requires the clinical agreement, affiliation and preceptor verification paperwork four weeks or more ahead of any clinical course. Ask whether the same forms are needed for an education site, and give yourself that four-week margin either way. When a site agrees to host you, confirm the hours and semester in writing so the commitment matches what faculty approve.

Certificate students should note the catalog's rule that no Nurse Educator hours carry over from past study, as the PMC hour transfer page explains. A placement advisor looks for direct-care preceptors and nursing education settings in your area and puts together the file faculty check, so SAU can rule on each site with everything in front of it. Track detail is on the Nurse Educator page; to begin, tell us your semester.