MySAU, Brightspace and SAU email: where your clinical work lives

01The systems at a glance

Four SAU systems show up in a clinical student's week. The table sets out what SAU says each one is for, and the last column is candid about how little SAU publishes on clinical use.

Box, SAU's cloud storage, also opens from MySAU. SAU's description of how its NP courses are taught mentions Zoom and iHuman virtual patient cases, so expect both in your track.

02MySAU is the front door

Think of MySAU as the hallway rather than a room. SAU's IT office describes the portal as the place that links to Brightspace, Box and email, and the catalog sends students there for the Academic Planner and registration. The 2026-27 Student Handbook adds account statements and directory-information privacy holds.

For clinicals, the Academic Planner is the useful piece. It is where you see which semester your practicum courses fall in, and that tells you when a preceptor must be approved and when the four-week paperwork clock begins. Look again whenever your course plan changes, because a shifted practicum moves every other date with it.

The portal lives at mysau3.arbor.edu; older SAU documents also give mysau.arbor.edu. Staff email, the portal and the library still run on arbor.edu addresses even though SAU's public site moved to springarbor.edu.

03Brightspace, not Blackboard

SAU's online courses run on D2L Brightspace. The old SAU Online address now opens a Brightspace login with an SAU single sign-on button, and SAU's IT office calls Brightspace the learning management system for all courses delivered online. Sign-in passes through Microsoft 365, so multifactor prompts come from your SAU Microsoft account.

The current-students page on SAU's online site still labels the same link Blackboard, and older SAU articles describe Blackboard as the online portal. SAU hasn't published when it changed platforms. If a guide, an old email or a classmate tells you to look in Blackboard, read it as Brightspace.

Your practicum is an online course like any other, so its syllabus, announcements and assignments sit in Brightspace. Read the practicum course shell the day it opens. It is the likeliest place to find that course's own instructions for hour logs, evaluations and due dates.

04SAU email is the official record

The 2023-24 catalog says SAU sends course cancellations and enrollment changes by SAU email, and the account runs on Office 365. Anything that touches your clinical course, from a moved start date to a missing document, is likely to reach you there first.

Use the same address when you write to a preceptor or clinic manager about an SAU rotation. It shows the site you are an enrolled SAU student and keeps the whole exchange in one account you can forward to faculty if a question comes up. SAU's clinicals article suggests emailing your preceptor before the first day to confirm place, time and dress.

Never move messages that contain patient details to a personal account. HIPAA training sits on SAU's compliance list, and the habit starts with your inbox.

05What SAU does not publish

Some answers you will want are not on SAU's public pages at all. Knowing which ones saves hours of searching.

• Where clinical paperwork is submitted. The catalog names clinical agreement, affiliation and preceptor verification forms, but not the system or inbox. See clinical paperwork.
• Which tracker, if any, holds your compliance records. The 2023-24 catalog says only that you keep current records with the nursing department, and no vendor is named on any SAU page.
• Where hours are logged. Students report using Typhon; SAU's pages don't name it. See clinical hour logs.
• Evaluation forms and site-visit tools, which we cover on clinical evaluations.

For each gap, the practicum course, your program director and your Student Success Coach are the people who know. Our who to ask page sorts out which of them handles what.

06Library tools for clinical days

The White Library's nursing guide lists an UpToDate Nursing Tool for point-of-care questions, alongside CINAHL Complete, MEDLINE with Full Text, Ovid Nursing Journals, Ovid Emcare and PubMed. Off campus, you sign in through the library's proxy with your SAU account.

If UpToDate won't open, the library page tells nursing students to contact the Nursing Department. The 2023-24 catalog adds that distance students can have print books shipped to them and can chat with a librarian at any hour.

Test your UpToDate sign-in at home before your first clinical day, when you have time to sort out a login problem, rather than in an exam room with a patient waiting. The same databases carry the evidence you will need when a preceptor asks you to justify a plan.

07A setup checklist before your first practicum

Do this in the weeks before your first clinical course opens. None of it is complicated, but all of it is easier at a desk than on a clinic day, and a login problem found now is a quick fix instead of a lost clinical morning.

• Sign in to MySAU and Brightspace from the device you will carry to clinicals, and finish the Microsoft 365 multifactor setup.
• Check the Academic Planner for the semester your practicum begins.
• Add SAU email to your phone so notices about course changes reach you between patients.
• Save the SAU Help Desk details: helpdesk@arbor.edu and the service portal at serviceportal.arbor.edu.
• Test the library proxy and UpToDate from home.
• Keep your own copy of every clinical document in Box or another secure folder.