TAMUCC's MSN Nurse Educator track and its teaching practicum
TAMUCC's Nurse Educator MSN is a 37-credit online track with 180 field hours, and every one of those hours happens in Texas. Most of them sit in NURS 5459, a 135-hour teaching practicum spent beside a preceptor you choose. We track down that preceptor, in the kind of teaching you want and near where you live, then prepare the documents TAMUCC's faculty review.
Find your Nurse Educator preceptor
Tell us your city and practicum term. Your placement advisor starts the search right away.
What the Nurse Educator track is built around
The College of Nursing and Health Sciences delivers the Nurse Educator MSN fully online. It prepares registered nurses to teach, in a nursing program or inside a hospital or clinic, and at 37 credits it is the shortest of TAMUCC's three MSN tracks. Leadership in Nursing Systems runs 40 credits and Family Nurse Practitioner runs 49.
Online lectures do not mean an online practicum. The 2026-27 catalog attaches 180 field hours to this track and requires them to be completed in Texas, a rule the MSN Student Handbook applies to every master's student. The Texas-only clinicals guide explains what that means if you live far from the coast.
The catalog also hands you the search: choosing the teaching organization and the preceptor for each field experience is the student's job on this track. To be admitted you need an RN license valid in Texas, either Texas-issued or a compact license carrying Texas practice authority, a GPA of at least 3.00 across your final 60 credit hours, and a written essay. Admission is rolling with no published start term, so your Degree Planner is where the practicum semester shows up.
The 37-credit course plan
In the table below, the first four courses are the MSN core shared by every TAMUCC master's track. The role courses then build the toolkit you carry into the practicum: curriculum design, teaching strategies, and ways to measure what learners actually took in.
Each MSN course runs only once a calendar year under the handbook, so one dropped or failed course can delay the practicum by twelve months. Map your sequence early with the CONHS Graduate Advisor, the person who handles program plans, registration and graduation.
| Course | Title | Credits | Field component |
|---|---|---|---|
NURS 5310 | Science in Nursing | 3 | None listed |
NURS 5314 | Research Methods in Advanced Nursing Practice | 3 | None listed |
NURS 5315 | Health Policy and Cultural Diversity | 3 | None listed |
NURS 5316 | Introduction to Advanced Practice Role Development | 3 | None listed |
NURS 5324 | Health Assessment for Advanced Practice | 3 | Lab hours: the virtual health assessment experience |
NURS 5326 | Advanced Physiology with Pathophysiological Applications | 3 | None listed |
NURS 5351 | Advanced Pharmacological Concepts for Nursing Educators | 3 | None listed |
NURS 5352 | Nursing Curriculum Planning, Development, and Evaluation | 3 | None listed |
NURS 5353 | Theory and Concepts for the Nurse Educator | 3 | None listed |
NURS 5354 | Assessment, Measurement, and Evaluation in Nursing | 3 | None listed |
NURS 5355 | Instructional Teaching Strategies | 3 | None listed |
NURS 5459 | Education Practicum for the Nurse Educator | 4 | 135 practicum hours with a preceptor; B or better |
Where the 180 field hours come from
The catalog splits the 180 hours into two pieces: a virtual health assessment experience and a capstone of teaching instruction in an academic or clinical area. The health assessment piece lives in NURS 5324, which carries weekly lab hours alongside its lecture. The capstone is NURS 5459, which TAMUCC says requires 135 hours in a practicum setting.
Take the practicum out of the total and about 45 hours remain for the health assessment lab. TAMUCC prints the 180 and the 135; the 45 is our arithmetic, so check the split with course faculty if your plan depends on it.
The practicum syllabus paces the work at about nine hours a week, and every hour must be completed before the final week of the semester. Graduate nursing at TAMUCC runs on full 16-week terms, which means you need a preceptor who can host you nearly every week of the term, not a few scattered days. The NURS 5459 practicum guide covers the course itself in detail.
Count practicum hours only after clinical faculty approve your setting. TAMUCC's course descriptions require lab hours to be completed in settings they have approved.
Choosing a teaching setting and a preceptor
NURS 5459 asks you to pick an area of teaching and work with a preceptor inside it. TAMUCC names two directions, academic teaching and clinical teaching. Academic teaching generally means a nursing education program, and clinical teaching generally means education work inside a health care setting; your course faculty confirm which settings qualify. Choose the one that matches the role you want after graduation, because the practicum is the nearest thing to a trial run this program offers.
TAMUCC publishes detailed preceptor criteria for its FNP courses, but none specific to the education practicum. Ask your course faculty what they expect of an education preceptor before you approach anyone, and bring the course objectives to the first conversation. A teaching organization new to TAMUCC may also need an affiliation agreement; TAMUCC budgets as long as three months for one and cautions that big health systems run slower. The affiliation agreements page explains how one starts.
Settle these before you contact a preceptor
- Academic or clinical teaching, and the learners you want to teach
- A Texas location you can reach about nine hours a week all term
- Whether the organization already has an agreement with TAMUCC
- What your course faculty require of an education preceptor
Compliance, clearance and grades
Every CONHS student buys a CastleBranch tracker and keeps it current each semester. The Educator program page asks for a five-panel drug screen while the MSN handbook calls for ten-panel, one of several places where TAMUCC's documents differ. The immunizations and drug screen guide lays out that conflict and the full list.
NURS 5459 needs a B or better to earn credit. Under TAMUCC's graduate rules, an unsatisfactory result in the clinical portion of a course fails the entire course, whatever the written grades say, and the program GPA has to stay at 3.0 or above. Repeat and dismissal rules sit on the grades and progression page.
Online study still brings the occasional trip. The handbook tells MSN students to expect periodic events on campus, with dates sent ahead of time, so leave room in your calendar for a visit to the Island campus.
Why Nurse Educator students choose us
The practicum is lighter on hours than the FNP track, but it is heavy on specifics: the right kind of teaching, in Texas, with someone willing to host you through a 16-week term. That is exactly the search we run. Your placement advisor starts from your course, your city and your choice of academic or clinical teaching, then reaches out to education preceptors who fit.
Then we assemble the file: a current CV and license copy from your education preceptor, confirmation of the organization's contract status with TAMUCC, and the name of whoever signs a new contract if one is needed. Approval stays with TAMUCC's clinical faculty, and our job is to hand them a file that is complete and matches TAMUCC's rules on first review. Should your preceptor step back partway through the term, we line up a new one so the practicum keeps moving.
Send us your practicum semester and city with the form at the bottom of this page. The how it works page shows each step we take.
Questions TAMUCC students ask
Does TAMUCC place Nurse Educator students in a practicum?
No. The 2026-27 catalog gives that choice to the student: you pick the teaching organization and the person who precepts you. TAMUCC's faculty approve the setting and oversee the course, while the legwork of finding it is yours. That legwork is what we take on, with a Texas teaching preceptor matched to NURS 5459.
Can I live outside Texas and still complete the Nurse Educator MSN?
The lectures are online, but TAMUCC requires field experiences in Texas and admits students holding a Texas RN license or a compact license that authorizes practice in Texas. A student based elsewhere would need to travel to a Texas teaching site for the practicum. Confirm your own situation with the program before you apply.
Is the health assessment part of the track done with a preceptor?
TAMUCC's catalog describes it as a virtual health assessment experience tied to NURS 5324 Health Assessment for Advanced Practice. The preceptor requirement TAMUCC spells out belongs to NURS 5459, the teaching practicum. Your NURS 5324 syllabus and course faculty decide how its lab hours are completed.
Can my own employer host the Nurse Educator practicum?
The workplace rule TAMUCC publishes is written for FNP students: your boss cannot precept you, a preceptor at your employer must have no say in how you are evaluated as an employee, and the hours must happen away from your own unit. No separate rule is published for the education practicum, so ask course faculty whether the same limits apply. The workplace clinicals guide has the FNP detail.
When should I start looking for a Nurse Educator preceptor?
Start at least a semester before NURS 5459. The practicum needs a steady weekly host, and an organization without a TAMUCC agreement may need as long as three months to sign one. Starting early also leaves time to confirm the preceptor with course faculty before the term opens.
Related pages
Last checked 2026-09-26
We check these pages against TAMUCC's catalog, FNP clinical guides, MSN and DNP handbooks and college pages. Your course, your clinical faculty member and the handbook for your cohort have the final word.
TAMUCC makes the preceptor search yours. Let us run it for you in Texas.
Tell us your TAMUCC program, your next clinical course and where in Texas you can drive. We find preceptors who fit the course and gather what the affiliation agreement and the Preceptor Agreement Packet need, early enough for both to clear.
- Preceptors matched to the course: pediatrics for
NURS 5644, women's health forNURS 5645, broad primary care forNURS 5746 - CV, license, board certification and the site's agreement status ready for TAMUCC's paperwork
- In Corpus Christi, the Valley, San Antonio, Houston, Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth and across Texas
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