Clarkson's MSN in Nursing Healthcare Administration and its leadership practicum

The HCA courses that lead to the practicum

The course page for NRS 898 lists its prerequisites: HCA 800, HCA 808, HCA 826, HCA 828, HCA 833 and HCA 836, plus NRS 813 from the MSN core. That places the practicum after all of the option's administration coursework, so the administration content you have studied is still fresh when you apply it on site.

The HCA courses sit beside the nine core courses every Clarkson MSN student takes, running from GRD 798 through IPE 301, which carries no credit. Clarkson's catalog pages carry each course's title and description, and the degree plan shows the order in which they are usually taken.

Clarkson also offers a multiple degree option that pairs this MSN with a Master of Healthcare Administration. Ask the program how the combination is structured and how the HCA courses count toward both degrees before you commit.

NRS 898: 150 hours inside a health care system

On the 2026-27 course page, NRS 898 runs 150 practicum hours for three credits in "a selected health care system," with the note that preceptor and practicum site approval must come before registration. Policy AA-55's per-credit math lands on 135, the number catalogs carried through 2022-23, and the practicum guide sorts out the difference.

Your preceptor, under Clarkson's 2021-22 graduate handbook, needs an MSN or higher and two years in nursing health care administration, and each course takes one preceptor. The handbook's list of acceptable sites runs from colleges and universities to hospitals and primary care offices, with hours kept in an area apart from your own job. The option has its own DocuSign version of the site and preceptor agreement, which Clarkson's 2025 resources page listed as the Nursing Healthcare Administration Preceptor Agreement Form.

How the option has shifted over five catalogs

If you are reading older Clarkson documents, expect the numbers to move. Catalogs from 2020-21 through 2022-23 set the practicum at 135 hours, and 150 arrived in 2023-24. The preceptor standard changed as well: the 2020-21 graduate handbook wanted a licensed NP with two years in that role, and the 2021-22 edition switched to the nurse administrator standard described above. Older handbooks and forms also write the course as NS 898, the prefix Clarkson used before NRS.

The option's credits have moved too, from 23 in 2025-26 to 20 in 2026-27. An AY 2024-25 Practicum Preceptor Handbook once sat on Clarkson's site and has since been removed, so ask your advisor or course faculty for the edition in force.