Your preceptor dropped out: Clarkson College rules and your next moves

The handbook's four steps

Clarkson took its graduate handbooks off its public site after July 2025, so the newest archived text is the 2021-22 edition. Ask your Graduate Nursing advisor whether the current version reads the same. In 2021-22 the sequence ran like this:

1. Tell course facultyFaculty should hear it from you first, before you approach anyone new. They also approve hours and any extra preceptors.
2. Find an alternateThe handbook asks you to "promptly locate an alternate preceptor under whom the expectations can be met," meaning someone who fits the course, not merely someone available.
3. Wait for the new paperworkNo hours with the new preceptor count until the new DocuSign agreement is complete, and Clarkson's sheets keep new preceptors out of Typhon until then.
4. Drop if the time frame failsIf the course cannot be finished in time, the handbook makes dropping your responsibility, after a discussion with course faculty and your Graduate Nursing academic advisor.

Your hours, the midterm mark and the preceptor limit

Clarkson's 2021-22 handbook wants hours spread evenly, with at least half done by midterm. Here is how fast a gap bites, using our own arithmetic: in a 160-hour course over a 15-week term, midterm lands around week 7 or 8 and half is 80 hours. A preceptor who leaves in week 5 with 50 hours logged leaves you about 30 to make up before midterm, plus whatever the paperwork wait costs.

Ask course faculty to confirm the hours already in Typhon. The handbook's no-count rule targets hours logged before final approval, and your first preceptor was approved, but faculty hold the final word on your tally.

Watch the preceptor count as well. Clarkson's 2023 NP sheets cap each course at two preceptors unless faculty sign off in writing, so a replacement who would be your third needs that written approval. And every clinician whose patients you share needs an agreement, including colleagues in one practice. The FNP sheet adds that when a specialty preceptor's paperwork is ready on day one but the primary preceptor's is not, the student contacts course faculty.

DNP mentors and practicum preceptors

Two groups work under slightly different rules. DNP students who lose their External Subject Area Expert/Mentor repeat the whole approval: Clarkson's 2023-24 DNP Hours Guide says a mentor change, for any reason, means going through the full approval process again.

Nursing Education and Nursing Healthcare Administration students in NRS 894 or NRS 898 had one preceptor per course under the 2021-22 handbook, so a replacement is a swap, not an addition. The new preceptor still needs two years as a nurse educator or nursing health care administrator and at least an MSN. Because there is no second preceptor to lean on, a practicum student has less slack than an NP student when a preceptor leaves, which makes an early call to course faculty even more important. The education and leadership practicums page has the rest.