NAU's online RN to BSN and its community clinical projects
Northern Arizona University's RN to BSN is one of three formats in the BSN Option for Registered Nurses, and all three share the same 30 units of NAU nursing courses, delivered online. The current plan has no clinical practicum course and no preceptor to line up: the catalog places clinical projects in your local community and prints no hours for them. If NP study comes next, this degree is also the right moment to prepare for it.
Get your placement plan
Tell us your NAU program and where you live. A placement advisor replies with the preceptor and site options that fit your course.
Three ways into the same degree
NAU's catalog groups three formats under the BSN Option for Registered Nurses, plan code NRNBSNX. Each ends in the same BSN built on the same 30 NAU nursing units; what differs is where you stand in your nursing career when you begin.
- RN to BSN: for nurses who already hold an unencumbered U.S. RN license. The catalog calls it semester-based, and NAU's start information lists entry in any semester.
- Associate to BSN: for students still in an associate degree nursing program, who may join at any point while enrolled. The 2024-25 catalog called this format Mid-AAS.
- Concurrent Enrollment Program (CEP): for students admitted to an Arizona community college's AAS nursing program, who finish both degrees in the same month.
The CEP page names the Maricopa Community Colleges, Arizona Western, Central Arizona, Coconino, Northland Pioneer, Pima, Mohave and Yavapai as partners. The degree totals 120 units, and up to 90 of them can arrive as transfer credit, the 90/30 split the CEP page describes. Degree search lists four years, a length measured across the whole 120-unit degree rather than the NAU nursing portion alone.
The nursing courses you take at NAU
The 2025-26 catalog lists ten required nursing courses: eight core courses worth 24 units, plus a writing course and a capstone that meet NAU-wide requirements.
| Course | Units | Role in the degree |
|---|---|---|
NUR 326, NUR 330, NUR 405, NUR 409, NUR 417, NUR 420, NUR 422, NUR 427 | 24 | Core nursing courses, taught online |
NUR 390W | 3 | Meets NAU's junior-level writing requirement |
NUR 450C | 3 | Senior capstone |
None of the ten carries clinical or practicum units, and that is recent. The 2024-25 plan had four tracks and a one-unit health assessment practicum, NUR 307L, alongside courses such as NUR 320, NUR 321, NUR 424 and NUR 442; the 2025-26 rebuild dropped the practicum course and regrouped the tracks into three formats.
NAU's RN to BSN admission guide from July 2024 still names several retired courses. Where the guide and the catalog disagree, follow the current catalog and confirm your plan with an undergraduate nursing advisor.
Clinical projects where you live
The catalog gives the clinical side a single sentence: courses are delivered online, and clinical projects happen in your local community. NAU publishes no hour count, project list or approval steps for them, so the syllabus for each course in Canvas and your course faculty are where the specifics come from.
What that sentence does settle is that this plan includes no NAU-assigned clinical site and no precepted rotation. You stay in your own town and your own job while project work draws on the community around you. That is a sharp contrast with NAU's pre-licensure formats, where the college assigns sites and students travel to them, as the BSN clinicals guide explains.
CEP students should note a small conflict. A CEP information page from July 2025 says every NAU CEP class is completed online, while the CEP program page from April 2025 mentions hybrid courses at partner locations and a hands-on summer jump start. Ask your community college partner and your NAU advisor which applies to your cohort.
NAU posts no project details ahead of time, so open each course syllabus in Canvas on the first day and note any community work it asks for.
Where you live can decide whether you enroll
The 2025-26 catalog and degree search both close the program to students living in Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee or Washington. The college's RN to BSN page from 2024 names only Alabama, Tennessee and Washington, so a Kentucky resident should get NAU's answer in writing before applying.
Outside those four, NAU enrolls distance students through its SARA participation, and SARA membership now covers every state except California; NAU says California students can still take its distance offerings. At the start of each term a SARA message at CAS login asks you to confirm your physical location, and a move to another state goes through the Change of Location form.
The RN to BSN is not listed on NAU's professional licensure table, which tracks programs that lead to a license; you are licensed already. The state authorization guide covers the location rules in full, including what a move can mean mid-program.
Setting up an NP path while you finish
If graduate study is your next step, NAU's MS Advanced Practice accepts a BSN, or an ADN plus a bachelor's degree in another field. It asks for a 3.0 GPA in nursing coursework, a current RN license for Arizona or a multistate license, and the IVP Fingerprint Clearance Card covered in the fingerprint card guide.
Two admission items lead straight back to your undergraduate transcript: an undergraduate nursing research course, and a public health nursing course that included both didactic and clinical work, each passed with a B or better. Since the RN to BSN plan carries no clinical units, ask a graduate nursing advisor early whether your coursework and community projects meet the clinical half of that public health requirement. Statistics must also be finished before you reach NUR 530.
NAU recommends three to five years of general nursing practice before applying to the advanced practice track, and a structured interview with faculty may be part of admission. Those working years are a good time to get to know the physicians and nurse practitioners who could later precept you. The MS FNP and MS PMHNP guides show what their practicums will ask.
How our placement desk helps RN to BSN graduates
The RN to BSN runs without a preceptor, so our work starts when you move into NAU's graduate programs. There, the FNP Clinical Guidelines invite students to suggest their own preceptors, and a preceptor you arrange near home reaches NAU through the Green Form. That is the step our desk is built around.
RN to BSN graduates who plan ahead choose us because we start early and cover the whole search: we look at where you live and work, find family practice or psychiatric preceptors within reach who satisfy Arizona's preceptor rule, and collect the CV, license, certification and site approval so the form reaches NAU complete and well ahead of its deadline. FNP students get NUR 661, NUR 663 and NUR 665 mapped as one sequence; PMHNP students get in-person psychiatric settings scouted for NUR 680.
Send your expected graduation term and the NP track you are considering through the form below; how it works shows what happens next.
Questions NAU students ask
Will I need a preceptor for NAU's RN to BSN?
No precepted rotation is part of the current plan. In the 2025-26 catalog none of the required nursing courses carries clinical units, and clinical projects are completed in your own community. Your course faculty and the syllabus in Canvas explain what each project asks of you.
Can I start NAU's RN to BSN in spring or summer?
NAU's start information lists the RN to BSN and Associate to BSN formats as open to entry in any semester, and the catalog describes the RN to BSN as semester-based. CEP timing follows your community college program instead. The undergraduate nursing advisors can confirm the application timing for the term you want.
How many credits transfer into NAU's RN to BSN?
Up to 90 of the degree's 120 units can come from transfer credit, and the remaining 30 are the NAU nursing courses every format shares. How your own transcripts apply is a question for the undergraduate nursing advisors, who help with admissions and coursework planning. Send transcripts early so the answer arrives before you register.
Can I take NAU's RN to BSN from Washington or Tennessee?
Not at present. The 2025-26 catalog and degree search list Washington, Tennessee, Alabama and Kentucky as states whose residents cannot enroll. An older college page omits Kentucky, so residents there should confirm in writing. Students in other states enroll under NAU's SARA participation and confirm their location each term.
Is NAU's RN to BSN accredited?
Yes. NAU's program accreditation table lists CCNE accreditation for Nursing - Option for Registered Nurses, the plan that holds the RN to BSN, with the next review in 2028. NAU itself is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission, next reaffirmed in 2027-28. The accreditation guide explains what each body covers.
Related pages
Last checked 2026-09-27
We check these pages against Northern Arizona University's own catalog, program pages and published nursing documents. Your program coordinator and course faculty have the final word.
- Northern Arizona University College of Nursing: RN to BSN
- Northern Arizona University College of Nursing: Concurrent Enrollment Program
- Northern Arizona University Academic Catalog 2025-26: Nursing, Option for Registered Nurses (archived)
- Northern Arizona University: how to apply, graduate nursing programs
- Northern Arizona University: program accreditation
NAU welcomes a preceptor you arrange. We arrange one close to home.
Tell us your NAU track, your town and your next practicum. We line up preceptors who fit the course and Arizona's preceptor rule, confirm the site's approval, and gather the CV, license and certification the Green Form needs, well before NAU's cutoff.
- Preceptors matched to the course: all-ages family primary care for FNP, psychiatric settings for PMHNP
- License, experience and certification checked against the rule NAU applies, before the Green Form goes in
- All three FNP practicums planned together, near home instead of a long drive away
Start your placement plan
Track, town and next practicum is all we need to begin.