How Excelsior students in Florida line up a mentor and a site
Excelsior's graduate nursing programs ask you to bring your own mentor, host site, and project. Here is how that works in Florida, from the Board of Nursing to the affiliation agreement, and where the qualified people are.
You are assembling three things, not one
Most students arrive hunting for one thing, a name. You need three: a mentor who is master's prepared in your area of study, a site willing to host the project and sign an agreement with the university, and a project the site can actually use. Faculty approves that combination. Faculty does not assemble it for you.
Excelsior states that it does not provide clinical instruction in its School of Nursing programs, and at the graduate level that is literally how it works. Nobody in Albany is dialing Tampa for you. Florida is friendlier than most states for the search, given the density of health systems, nursing schools, and county health offices.
One Florida note. Excelsior runs a prelicensure Hybrid BSN from its St. Petersburg site, with in person labs plus clinical experiences arranged with partner organizations around Tampa Bay. If you are in that program, your clinicals come through Excelsior and this page does not apply to you. We help with the graduate and RN-to-BS practice experience, where the search falls on the student.
What has to be in place before hours count
- A named mentor your faculty approved
- A host site with a signed affiliation agreement
- A scoped project with a deliverable the site wants
- A complete CastleBranch file plus site onboarding
Where Florida's master's prepared mentors actually work
For nursing education, the pools are academic programs and hospital professional development teams. Florida's academic bench is deep: the USF College of Nursing in Tampa, St. Petersburg, and Sarasota-Manatee, UCF in Orlando, the University of Florida in Gainesville and at UF Health Jacksonville, Florida State in Tallahassee, the Nicole Wertheim College of Nursing and Health Sciences at FIU in Miami, and the Christine E. Lynn College of Nursing at FAU in Boca Raton and Davie. See nursing education mentors.
For informatics, aim at the clinical systems, analytics, and training functions inside the big systems. AdventHealth, headquartered in Altamonte Springs, Orlando Health, BayCare across Tampa Bay, Baptist Health South Florida, Tampa General, and UF Health all run electronic record work at scale. The project practically writes itself: documentation burden, alert tuning, order set cleanup, a reporting gap somebody has complained about for a year. See informatics mentors.
For leadership, directors, nurse managers, quality leads, and service line administrators qualify when their degree and day job match your coursework. Do not overlook the Florida Department of Health, which runs a county health department in all 67 counties. Those offices manage programs, budgets, and staff, and are often more receptive than a busy hospital unit. Community health centers, hospice and home health agencies, and long term care organizations work too. See leadership mentors.
The rule underneath is short. Master's prepared, real expertise in your specialization, willing to volunteer. You nominate, faculty approves, nobody is assigned. Some students say preceptor, but Excelsior's word is mentor: mentor vs preceptor, find a mentor.
Your Florida RN license, and why the host will check it
Registered nurses here are licensed by the Florida Board of Nursing, part of the Florida Department of Health. Licenses renew biennially, and both renewal and free public verification run through the Board's own systems. Save a current verification as a PDF for the packet you send prospective sites, because the education director or risk manager will look you up before saying yes.
Florida joined the Nurse Licensure Compact in 2018, so a Florida multistate license lets you practice in other compact states without a second application. That matters if you moved here mid program, or your mentor is in Ocala while the host agency sits across a state line. Confirm your standing on the Board's site, since multistate status depends on your declared primary state of residence. None of this makes you a provider at the site. Graduate practice experience is indirect care work, so the license question is about credibility and risk screening.
The affiliation agreement and CastleBranch, in order
Once a site says yes out loud, the real gate appears. Excelsior needs an affiliation agreement in force with that organization before your hours count. Large Florida systems have legal departments that have processed hundreds of these, which is good for predictability and bad for improvisation, since they want the university's template and their own review window. Smaller agencies and county offices move faster but need more guidance. Start six to eight weeks ahead: affiliation agreement.
Compliance runs through CastleBranch: background check, immunization records, TB screening, plus whatever your program adds. Florida sites routinely layer badge, orientation, and health screening steps on top, and those eat calendar days nobody budgets for. See CastleBranch compliance.
What Florida hosts typically ask to see
- A current, unencumbered Florida or multistate RN license
- A completed CastleBranch record
- A signed affiliation agreement with Excelsior
- Proof of student liability coverage
- One page describing the project and its deliverable
The hours, stated plainly
Each MSN capstone carries 135 practice experience hours, and that is the number to plan against across Nursing Education, Nursing Informatics, and Nursing Leadership and Administration. RN-to-BS is lighter, roughly 90 hours across two 45 hour courses: RN-to-BS practice experience.
It helps to name what this is not. A practice experience is not a clinical rotation and it is not direct patient care, which is why your pitch to a Florida site should be about a project and a deliverable rather than shifts. Framed that way you get a yes more often, especially from county offices and small agencies who hear shifts and picture supervision they cannot spare.
Most students spread 135 hours across a term in blocks that fit the mentor's calendar, often early mornings or a standing weekly half day. Practice experience hours explains logging, and capstone project covers scoping work a site will adopt rather than file.
Remote and hybrid work, and what to confirm first
Much indirect care work can happen off site. Curriculum development, workflow analysis, policy revision, quality dashboards, staffing model review: none of that requires standing in the building for all 135 hours. Students in rural counties, and anyone splitting a job in Jacksonville against a mentor in Miami, ask about this constantly.
The honest answer is that it turns on two approvals. The site has to be comfortable, and your Excelsior faculty has to accept the arrangement for your specific course. Ask first, get it into your learning contract, and keep some on site presence if the project touches workflow. If the site is outside Florida, see out of state practice experience.
If you have been emailing Florida contacts for weeks with silence coming back, that is where we help. We run the mentor and site search for Excelsior graduate and RN-to-BS students, chase the agreement, and keep compliance moving. We do not guarantee placement and cannot approve anyone on Excelsior's behalf, because faculty does that. Fees are on the cost page. Send your specialization, county, and term start: get matched.
Answered
Does Excelsior find my mentor for me in Florida?
No. For the MSN specializations and RN-to-BS, you identify the mentor and host site yourself, and faculty approves your nominee. The one exception is the prelicensure Hybrid BSN in St. Petersburg, a different program whose clinical experiences are arranged through Excelsior's partner organizations.
I hold a multistate license from another compact state and just moved to Florida. Where does that leave me?
Florida is a Nurse Licensure Compact member, so a valid multistate license from another compact state generally lets you practice here. The catch is primary state of residence: once Florida becomes yours, the compact expects your license to move with you. Confirm with the Board.
Can my own manager at the hospital where I work be my mentor?
Often yes, if they are master's prepared, their expertise matches your specialization, and faculty approves. The harder requirement is the project, which has to be distinguishable from your paid duties rather than your normal work with a log attached.
How far ahead should I start looking in Florida?
Eight to twelve weeks before the term. The mentor conversation is usually quick. The slow parts are the affiliation agreement, which sits in a legal department's queue, and site onboarding like badging, which large Tampa, Orlando, and Miami systems schedule on their calendar rather than yours.
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