Finding a mentor and a host site in Tennessee
Excelsior University states that no School of Nursing program provides clinical instruction, which means the mentor, the site, and the project are yours to arrange. Tennessee makes that a regional problem before it is an academic one, so this page starts with where you live and works outward.
Where you sit in Tennessee changes the search
Tennessee runs about 440 miles from the Mississippi River to the mountains, and it crosses two time zones on the way. Memphis and Nashville keep Central time. Knoxville, Chattanooga, and the Tri-Cities keep Eastern. A student in Dyersburg and a student in Kingsport are not shopping in the same market, and a standing weekly call with a mentor an hour off your clock is the kind of small friction that quietly ends arrangements in week five.
Set a realistic radius first, then widen it. Middle Tennessee around Nashville, Murfreesboro, Franklin, and Clarksville has the deepest bench of master's prepared nurses in education, informatics, and leadership roles. Memphis is concentrated rather than broad, with a handful of large employers holding most of the relevant jobs. East Tennessee spreads across Knoxville, Chattanooga, and the Johnson City and Kingsport corridor. Rural West Tennessee and the Upper Cumberland look thin on paper, and yet they often move faster, because the person who can actually approve you is one office away instead of four departments up.
The order of operations does not change with geography. How it works lays out the full sequence.
Who counts as a mentor here
Excelsior's word is mentor. Some students say preceptor, because that is the word nursing school taught them, but the requirement here is its own thing. Your mentor is a volunteer, holds a master's degree or higher, and has real expertise in your specialization. You nominate the person. Faculty approves or declines that nomination. Nothing is assigned to you. Mentor versus preceptor covers the wording, and find a mentor covers the search.
Because graduate nursing at Excelsior is indirect care, you are not looking for someone to supervise patient care. You want a nurse who already does the work you are trying to learn: teaching it, building it, or running it.
Those are starting points, not commitments. Every organization sets its own rules about who may mentor a student and what it will sign, so treat this as a map of where to begin asking.
Where Tennessee mentors actually work
- Education: faculty and course coordinators at Vanderbilt University School of Nursing, the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis, UT Knoxville, UT Chattanooga, East Tennessee State University, Middle Tennessee State University, Austin Peay State University, Belmont, Lipscomb, Tennessee State University, Union University in Jackson, Tennessee Tech in Cookeville, and community college nursing programs from Northeast State to Dyersburg State. Hospital professional development departments hire the same skill set.
- Informatics: clinical informatics and applications teams at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Ascension Saint Thomas, TriStar Health, Methodist Le Bonheur and Baptist Memorial in Memphis, the University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville, Erlanger in Chattanooga, and Ballad Health in the Tri-Cities. Nashville is also a health technology employer city on its own, with HCA Healthcare, HealthStream, Change Healthcare, LifePoint Health in Brentwood, and Community Health Systems in Franklin all employing nurses who work in data, workflow, and the record build.
- Leadership and administration: nurse managers, directors, and quality leads at Regional One Health and St. Jude in Memphis, West Tennessee Healthcare in Jackson, Williamson Health in Franklin, Maury Regional in Columbia, Cookeville Regional, Covenant Health in Knoxville, and Veterans Affairs facilities in Nashville, Murfreesboro, Memphis, and Mountain Home. The Tennessee Department of Health staffs health departments across all 95 counties, with separate metropolitan departments in Davidson, Shelby, Knox, Hamilton, Madison, and Sullivan.
The Board of Nursing and the license behind your placement
Registered nurses here are licensed by the Tennessee Board of Nursing, which sits inside the Tennessee Department of Health and keeps its office on Mainstream Drive in Nashville. You are already licensed, so this is not about earning credentials. It is about the fact that the agency hosting you will look you up before it signs anything, and so will the nursing program or health system that lets you sit in on its work.
Verification is public through the Department of Health's license verification system. Pull your own record before you approach anyone, so you know exactly what a compliance office will see. Tennessee renews RN licenses on a two year cycle, and expiration dates are keyed to the individual licensee rather than a shared statewide date, so confirm yours in the Board's system and hold it against your capstone term. A license that lapses mid term is one of the few ways to lose a site you already earned.
Tennessee is a Nurse Licensure Compact state and has been since the compact took effect on January 19, 2018. If Tennessee is your primary state of residence you may hold a multistate license, which matters here more than in most states: Tennessee borders eight others, and plenty of students in Memphis, Chattanooga, Clarksville, and Bristol live closer to an out of state mentor than an in state one. Membership and rules do change, so confirm current status at nursecompact.com, and read out of state practice experience before you plan anything across a line.
Getting a Tennessee site to sign
A willing mentor is not a placement until the organization behind that mentor agrees in writing. Excelsior needs an affiliation agreement with the host, and the path is predictable: the department that wants you, then legal or risk management, then whoever holds signature authority. A large Nashville or Memphis system may route every student request through one central education office and may already have an agreement with Excelsior on file, in which case you are being added to something that exists. A county health department, a school district, or a small nursing program in Cleveland or Union City may never have seen the document before. Ask early who actually signs, and start a full term ahead.
Health records and background screening run through CastleBranch, and most Tennessee hosts add their own layer on top: badge photos, orientation modules, record system training, sometimes a drug screen. Open your file the moment a site comes into view rather than after the agreement clears. See CastleBranch compliance and, if you carry your own coverage, student liability insurance.
The hours, and what your project should leave behind
Each MSN capstone carries 135 practice experience hours with your approved mentor. If you are finishing the RN-to-BS, the practice experience is about 90 hours, split across two 45 hour courses. That is roughly nine or ten hours a week across a capstone term, which fits around a working schedule when you plan for it and not at all when you start looking for a mentor in week three. Practice experience hours has the detail.
A practice experience is not a clinical rotation and it is not direct patient care, which is why a curriculum redesign, a documentation workflow audit, or a unit level quality project all fit while bedside shadowing generally does not. Excelsior's nursing programs are accredited by ACEN at the bachelor's and master's level, with Middle States accreditation institutionally.
Point your capstone project at something the host can keep after you leave. An onboarding module for a med surg unit in Johnson City. A dashboard that shows a Murfreesboro director where her falls are clustering. A charting workflow cleanup that gives a rural clinic in West Tennessee back twenty minutes a shift. Sites say yes faster when the request sounds like help rather than homework.
Remote arrangements, and what to do if this stalls
Indirect care work travels reasonably well. Curriculum writing, data and reporting work, policy revision, and quality analysis can often run partly remote when the host and your faculty both agree, which matters in a state where a student in Paris or Tullahoma may be well over an hour from the nearest organization with a formal informatics team. Ask your program first and get the arrangement confirmed in writing. Approval belongs to your faculty and your host, and nobody should promise you hours that have not been cleared.
If you have spent weeks emailing Tennessee nurse leaders and hearing nothing, that is ordinary and it is fixable. We source candidate mentors and host sites, keep the agreement and compliance moving, and hand you introductions you follow up on yourself. We do not guarantee placement and we cannot approve anyone, because only your faculty can. Tell us your specialization, your county, and your capstone start date and get matched. Pricing sits on the cost page, and if the clock is already short, start with need a mentor fast or mentor backed out replacement.
Answered
My best mentor option is across the state line. Does that still work?
Often yes, and Tennessee students run into this constantly because the state touches eight others. Two things have to hold: your license has to be valid where the work actually happens, which a multistate compact license may already cover, and the out of state agency has to sign an affiliation agreement with Excelsior. Confirm both with your program before you commit, and read out of state practice experience first.
When can I start logging hours?
After three things are done: faculty has approved your nominated mentor, the affiliation agreement with the host is executed, and your CastleBranch file is clear. Hours logged before that generally do not count, which is a painful way to learn the sequence. Budget 135 hours for an MSN capstone and about 90 for RN-to-BS.
I just moved to Nashville with a multistate license from another compact state. What now?
The compact's own rule is that a nurse moving from one compact state to another applies for licensure in the new primary state of residence within 60 days. If Tennessee is now your primary residence, that clock is running. Residency questions get fact specific, so confirm your situation directly with the Tennessee Board of Nursing rather than relying on a summary.
Can any of my Tennessee hours be done remotely?
Sometimes, and usually only in part. Informatics builds, curriculum development, and quality projects are the usual candidates, and some Tennessee hosts are comfortable with a hybrid arrangement while others are not. It is a decision your host and your faculty make together, never a promise we can make on their behalf, so get it approved in writing before you count an hour.
I am in the prelicensure Hybrid BSN or the associate degree program. Does this page apply to me?
No. Excelsior arranges clinical placement for its prelicensure Hybrid BSN in St. Petersburg, Florida, and for its associate degree program, so that arranging is already handled for those students. This page is written for the graduate specializations and the RN-to-BS practice experience, where finding the mentor and the site falls to you.
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