Courses to pass before a Spring Arbor practicum

01The four gates before any practicum

The Progression of Studies section of the 2023-24 catalog names four courses a student must pass before beginning NUR 680, any NUR 780 practicum, or NUR 660. The same four appear as prerequisites for NUR 780B on SAU's current Nurse Educator certificate page, and a search listing of the 2024-25 NUR 680G course page shows them as well, so the rule looks stable. Later catalogs cannot be read, though, so treat the list as a starting point and verify it in your Brightspace course list or with your advisor.

02How the chain runs back to your first courses

The gate is really a chain. NUR 602 cannot start until NUR 510, 522, 532 and 551 are behind you, and NUR 551 in turn expects nursing research and statistics. A slip anywhere early in the program pushes your first clinical day back.

The residency deserves a closer look than the rest of the chain. The 2023-24 catalog makes passing NUR 602R a condition for track-specific courses as well as practicums, allows one repeat for a fee, and ties it to the health assessment course. SAU schedules it in the second year for students who enter with a BSN and in the third year for RN-entry students. The residency page covers what the four days check.

RN-to-MSN students reach NUR 602 only after the BSN phase. The catalog counts NUR 510 and NUR 522 toward both degrees, and it wants a 3.0 GPA when the BSN phase ends before the MSN begins. The RN-to-MSN page walks through that timing.

03Extra gates for the PMHNP, PNP and educator courses

Three clinical courses carry prerequisites beyond the core four in the 2023-24 catalog or on SAU's current pages. The FNP and AGPCNP practicum, NUR 680, lists only the core four in its catalog description.

• NUR 780M (PMHNP): needs NUR 714, which needs NUR 713, which needs NUR 712. That is three psychiatric courses in a row before the practicum can open.
• NUR 780K (PNP-PC): needs NUR 702, Advanced Pediatric Physical Assessment and Pharmacotherapeutics.
• NUR 660 (Nurse Educator internship): the current certificate page lists NUR 551, 602, 612, 618, 625 and 635, with NUR 635 itself following NUR 625.

The psychiatric sequence matters most for planning, because it lines up three courses, one after another, in front of NUR 780M. Both courses have their own pages: NUR 780M and NUR 780K.

04The NUR 628 question

SAU's current RN-to-FNP and RN-to-AGPCNP pages list NUR 628, Advanced Pharmacology Across the Lifespan for Nurse Practitioners, and describe it as building on NUR 618. It does not appear in the 2023-24 catalog. A search engine indexes a 2025-26 catalog page for it, but that page sits behind the same human check as the rest of the current catalog.

What nobody outside SAU can confirm is whether NUR 628 must now be passed before an NP practicum. If it must, your first clinical course may start one seven-week block later than an older plan suggests, and that changes the date you give a preceptor.

Ask your advisor directly, and look at where NUR 628 falls in your Academic Planner in MySAU. Do both before you commit a preceptor to a start month.

05Post-master's certificate students

The 2023-24 catalog gives certificate students their own list to clear before clinicals: statistics, health promotion (NUR 632 or NUR 633), NUR 612 and NUR 618, and the NUR 602/NUR 602R pair. You may already hold some of these from an earlier master's, and SAU says certificate start dates vary with your prerequisites.

An excusal from NUR 602 and its residency does not mean skipping the skills check. The catalog has those students record a complete advanced head-to-toe assessment on video and turn it in through NUR 610, Foundation of Post-Graduate Nursing, before any clinical course. The current certificate pages do not mention a campus residency at all.

For how the certificates differ from one another, see the post-master's certificates page.

06Passing the courses is not the whole gate

The 2023-24 catalog makes permission to start clinicals depend on three things together: your academic performance, completed prerequisites, and program approval by your academic advisor with the nursing department. Coursework is one of the three.

Two other tracks run in parallel with your last prerequisite courses. Your compliance items, from the background check to the RN license, must be in place before any practicum (see the compliance page). Your preceptor and site need faculty approval, and the catalog expects the clinical agreement, affiliation and preceptor verification forms in hand with at least four weeks to spare before a clinical course begins.

That is why the preceptor search belongs in the same months as NUR 612 and NUR 618, not after NUR 602R. A placement advisor starts looking while you finish coursework, so a preceptor is lined up by the time the gates open; every approval still comes from SAU's faculty. Tell us which course you are in now.