Finding your mentor, your site, and your project in New Hampshire
Excelsior hands you the requirement and leaves the arrangements to you: your own mentor, your own practice-experience site, your own project. In New Hampshire that means finding a master's prepared nurse in Manchester, the Upper Valley, the Seacoast, or the North Country who will say yes, and an agency willing to sign an agreement with your university.
Who can actually serve as your mentor here
Excelsior's word is mentor, not preceptor. Some students call it a preceptor because that is what everyone searches for, but nobody is standing beside you at a bedside signing off skills. Your mentor holds a master's degree or higher, works in the specialization you are studying, and guides an independent project to a result. Faculty approves the person you nominate. Faculty does not find that person for you, and neither does a New Hampshire hospital.
The state is small enough that this is workable and sparse enough that it can take a few tries. The right mentor depends on your track: education, informatics, or leadership and administration.
Where those nurses work in this state
- Upper Valley and west: Dartmouth Health, anchored by Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, plus Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital, Cheshire Medical Center in Keene, New London Hospital, and Valley Regional Hospital in Claremont
- South and Merrimack Valley: Elliot Hospital and Catholic Medical Center in Manchester, Southern New Hampshire Medical Center and St. Joseph Hospital in Nashua, Concord Hospital, Parkland Medical Center in Derry, and the Manchester VA Medical Center
- Seacoast and Lakes Region: Wentworth-Douglass Hospital in Dover, Exeter Hospital, Portsmouth Regional Hospital, and Frisbie Memorial Hospital in Rochester
- Nursing programs: the University of New Hampshire, Saint Anselm College, Rivier University, Colby-Sawyer College, Plymouth State, Keene State, and the community colleges in Concord, Nashua, Portsmouth, Claremont, Laconia, and Berlin
- Public health and community care: the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services in Concord, the Manchester Health Department, the Nashua Division of Public Health and Community Services, the regional public health networks, Amoskeag Health, Lamprey Health Care, Granite VNA, and county nursing homes
The board that licenses you, and why a host agency asks
The New Hampshire Board of Nursing sits inside the state's Office of Professional Licensure and Certification in Concord. You are already a licensed RN, so a graduate practice experience adds nothing to your license or your scope. What it adds is a second organization with an interest in that license: the host site verifies you are in good standing before it lets you near a project, a chart, or a staff meeting.
RN licenses renew on a two-year cycle here, and the state emails a notice ahead of expiration. Check your own record on the state licensing portal before you send anything to a site coordinator. A license that is expired, pending, or filed under a different last name than your paperwork is a boring way to lose a term.
New Hampshire participates in the Nurse Licensure Compact, which matters more here than in most states, because so many nurses also hold shifts across the line in Massachusetts, Maine, or Vermont. If the site you want is over a border, confirm that state's current compact status at nursecompact.com and read out-of-state practice experience. Licensure and site approval are separate questions.
Two yeses: the person, then the organization
A nurse leader can want to mentor you and still have no authority to let you in the building. The second yes comes from whoever owns student placement: nursing professional development, the nursing education office, or a system-level academic partnership contact. At Dartmouth Health or Concord Hospital that is a formal desk with a queue. At a small North Country agency it may be the director of nursing between two other jobs.
Then comes the affiliation agreement between Excelsior and the site. A large system's legal review can run weeks, and a small clinic or school district may be reading the document for the first time. Start a term ahead. Our affiliation agreement guide covers what usually stalls it.
Compliance runs through CastleBranch: background check, immunization records, TB screening, and whatever the site adds on top, which in New Hampshire hospitals often means their own onboarding module and badge process. Build the file before anyone asks for it. One advantage of a small state is that the professional network is short. The educator in Concord who cannot take you this term usually knows who can in Laconia or Rochester.
The hours you owe, and what fills them
Each MSN capstone carries 135 practice-experience hours. RN-to-BS runs about 90, split across two 45-hour courses. Those are the real numbers, worth stating plainly because students often brace for the hundreds of hours a direct-care program demands. See practice-experience hours and the RN-to-BS practice experience.
The hours are meetings with your mentor, a needs assessment, building the thing, piloting or teaching it, measuring whether it moved, and writing it up. A practice experience is deliberately not a clinical rotation and not direct patient care, which is why it can live in a quality department, a nursing education office, or an informatics team rather than on a unit.
Projects that fit here: a competency module for a critical access hospital in the North Country, a documentation or order-set cleanup with an informatics team in Lebanon or Manchester, a fall-prevention project on a Concord or Nashua unit, a school health education program in the Monadnock region. More starting points are in capstone project.
Remote work, hybrid work, and the driving problem
Geography is a real constraint. Berlin to Concord is a long drive in February, the Upper Valley is its own world, and a student in Keene has different options than one in Salem. Hybrid arrangements come up constantly here.
Much indirect-care work can run partly remote when the site and faculty both agree, since curriculum design, documentation audits, dashboards, and policy work do not require your physical presence for every hour. We will not promise you that. Program rules govern, they change, and the site gets a say. Get the arrangement confirmed in writing before you count an hour.
Many students use their own employer as the site, which shortens the agreement conversation and solves the driving. Ask faculty first whether someone in your reporting line can be the approved mentor, because that answer is program specific.
If you would rather not make these calls yourself
That is our job. We are independent, not affiliated with or endorsed by Excelsior University, and we work this state like a market: find the master's prepared mentor whose background matches your specialization, get the site's placement office engaged, and push the agreement and the compliance file while you keep working your shifts. We do not guarantee placement, and only your faculty approves a mentor. Fees are on the cost page, the sequence is on how it works, and you can get matched in about two minutes.
Answered
Does my mentor have to work in a hospital?
No. Excelsior graduate nursing is indirect care, so what matters is the specialization, not the setting. Staff development at a community health center, teaching in a New Hampshire nursing program, quality at a critical access hospital, or a hospital informatics team all work, provided the expertise matches your track and faculty approves.
Can I do my practice experience where I already work?
Usually yes, and in a state with this much driving it is often the cleanest option. The organization still signs an affiliation agreement with Excelsior, and you should confirm with faculty whether someone in your reporting line can be the mentor. Start with nursing education or professional development, not your unit manager.
I live in New Hampshire but my license is from another state. Does that work?
It depends where the site is and which licenses you hold. New Hampshire participates in the Nurse Licensure Compact, so a multistate license from another compact state may cover you here, but the host agency still makes its own call. Check current status at nursecompact.com, then tell us both states and we will map the options.
How early should I start looking for a mentor?
A full term before the course begins. The mentor conversation itself can be quick. The affiliation agreement and the compliance file are what take time, especially at a large system with a legal queue.
Is this the same placement service Excelsior provides for its prelicensure students?
No. Excelsior does arrange clinical placements for its prelicensure programs, including the hybrid BSN based in St. Petersburg, Florida. Graduate nursing is different: the School of Nursing states that no clinical instruction is provided in its programs, so MSN and RN-to-BS students arrange the mentor, the site, and the project themselves. That gap is our work.
Let us line up the mentor, the site, and the project.
Tell us your program and your term. No payment until you are matched.
Get matched with a mentor