NUR 780B: the 125-hour EDU/MBA clinical practicum

01What SAU's current pages say

Everything SAU publishes about NUR 780B sits on its live program pages: the MSN Nurse Educator, RN-to-MSN Nurse Educator, MSN/MBA, RN-to-MSN/MBA and Nurse Educator certificate pages. The description runs only a few lines.

Advanced pathophysiology, pharmacology and health assessment come first, the same four courses the NP tracks pass before their practicums.

02A course the 2023-24 catalog does not have

Course numbers on this site normally trace back to SAU's 2023-24 Graduate Catalog, because later ones cannot be opened publicly. NUR 780B is the exception. That catalog had no such course: the Nurse Educator MSN relied on the NUR 660 internship alone (50 hours of direct care, 100 in education), and its MSN/MBA listed no clinical course at all.

The course appears on SAU's program pages today, and search results point to a 2025-26 catalog entry for it, which cannot be opened without passing a human check. So its credit value and the semester it falls in are unverified. Credit totals have shifted around it too: the Nurse Educator MSN went from 39 credits to 38, and the MSN/MBA from 63 to 61.

Find NUR 780B in your Brightspace course list, or ask your advisor where it falls, before you promise a preceptor any dates.

03Who can precept NUR 780B

NUR 780B opens the preceptor role to four groups: certified NPs, physicians, PAs, and nurses with a master's degree working in a specialty field. That last option is what separates it from the NP practicums, and it widens the pool of possible preceptors for educator and MBA students.

SAU does not define specialty field, and the course still asks for a direct care setting. A master's-prepared nurse in an administrative or classroom role may not offer 125 hours of direct care, however well qualified. When you submit, describe the nurse's degree, specialty, role and where the patient care happens, and ask program faculty before your preceptor commits.

The full comparison across tracks, including what SAU leaves unpublished, is on the preceptor requirements page.

04How NUR 780B fits each track

Two questions stay open. The RN-to-MSN Nurse Educator total conflicts between SAU's own pages, and the certificate page lists NUR 780B without saying how its hours relate to the 150 internship hours. Both belong on your list of questions for SAU. SAU's figures side by side are on the clinical hours page, and the internship has its own NUR 660 page.

05What to ask, and whom

Both tracks that use NUR 780B sit under one SAU title, the Director of DNP and MSN-EDU/MSN-MBA Programs. Your advisor is the other route. The who to ask page explains how SAU's roles divide the work.

• How many credits NUR 780B carries in your plan, and in which semester it falls.
• Whether your cohort's total is 125 or 225 hours, if you are in the RN-to-MSN Nurse Educator track.
• Whether certificate students complete NUR 780B on top of the 150 internship hours.
• Whether the setting you have in mind counts as direct care.
• Whether a master's-prepared nurse in your chosen specialty would be approved.

Ask by email and keep the replies with your clinical paperwork.

06Finding 125 hours of direct care

None of the Nurse Educator or MSN/MBA pages carries SAU's 2026 partner-network line, so plan your own search and use SAU's published help beside it. The 2023-24 catalog puts its four-week paperwork rule in the certificate section, covering the clinical agreement, affiliation and preceptor verification forms; to be safe, treat it as applying to NUR 780B too.

A placement advisor searches your area for direct-care clinicians who fit the four preceptor categories and can host 125 hours, and assembles what faculty check. Approval is SAU's decision alone, and the file we help build gives faculty every document they look for. Track detail sits on the Nurse Educator page and the MSN/MBA page. To begin, send us your track and start date.