Canvas and myNKU: where NKU keeps your clinical rules and contacts

NKU's advising pages say Canvas is used for all School of Nursing courses. Alongside your regular course sites, clinical students join a few shared shells that act as the program's noticeboard.

The self-enrollment links for the MSN concentration shells and the MSN Clinical Information Canvas are on NKU's Students page for the School of Nursing. None of these shells is public, which is why so much of NKU's clinical detail never shows up in a web search.

Enroll in your concentration shell and the MSN Clinical Information Canvas as soon as you start, not when your first L course is near. NKU says deadlines and process changes are announced there, and it tells students to switch on email notifications so an update is not missed.

Those notifications land in your NKU email, the @mymail.nku.edu address NKU's IT office calls the primary means of communication on campus. NKU's new-MSN advising page also sends orientation dates to that inbox, so check it as often as your work email.

A missed announcement is the most avoidable reason to miss a clinical deadline. Set notifications for announcements to arrive right away rather than as a weekly digest, and add studentclinicalinfo@nku.edu to your safe senders.

This is the shell that settles arguments. NKU's public pages disagree in places: the online FAQ names InPlace while every clinical page names Medatrax, one FAQ answer gives a 30-day minimum and another says 90 days, and the FAQ still quotes 500 to 600 NP hours while the program pages say 750 (our clinical hours page traces that change). The MSN Clinical Information Canvas carries the current version.

It also holds what NKU keeps off the open web. NKU's Students page says the details of its placement assistance are in this course, so read them there before you ask for help. Our placement assistance page covers what NKU publishes about that help.

Clinical and Concentration Coordinators are named there too. NKU lists them only inside this shell, so it is the place to look before you email a general address.

NKU does not list its immunization, TB, CPR and other clinical requirements on any public MSN page. NKU's new-MSN advising page points students to the General Clinical Information section of the concentration shell instead.

The items listed there feed the compliance side of your placement, with records tracked through PreCheck and Sentry rather than Canvas itself. The Contracts & Compliance team answers questions about both systems and reviews your record as one portion of each Medatrax request, and NKU's FAQ says you get a notice once you are verified as clinically ready.

Read the section before your first clinical course, not during it, because an expired item can hold a placement that is otherwise complete. The full list of what NKU checks is on our clinical compliance page.

NKU keeps its program handbooks inside Canvas rather than on the public site. The MSN handbook and the clinical handbook sit in each specialty shell, with the handbook in the first module. The post-master's DNP handbook and practicum guidelines sit in the DNP Info Site, and the RN-to-BSN handbook sits in its own shell.

Copies of older handbooks circulate on study-sharing websites. Use the version in your shell; it is the one your coordinators and Clinical Instructor work from, and it may differ from a copy that is a year or two old. When a rule in the handbook seems to clash with a public NKU page, the handbook in your shell is the better guide, and your Clinical Instructor can confirm. DNP students can direct handbook questions to dnp@nku.edu, and our DNP page covers the practicum.

myNKU is NKU's web portal for registration, your academic plan, the degree audit and personal details. Two clinical uses matter most. Your Clinical Instructor for each L course appears under Class Schedule, and your assigned advisor appears under Student Self Service, then My Records, then My Advisor.

Your Clinical Instructor is the course-level contact during a rotation and is also listed in the course's Canvas site. Course sequencing questions go to your academic advisor through CHHS advising at chhsadvising@nku.edu.

The NKU Mobile App bundles email, Canvas, grades, holds and registration in one place, which helps when you check announcements between patients or on a lunch break at work. For evidence-based practice work, NKU's Steely Library offers CINAHL and course research guides.

Our placement desk builds every NKU search around what your own Canvas shell says. A placement advisor asks for the posted deadline and preceptor requirements for your next L course, matches a preceptor and site to them, and times the paperwork so your Medatrax request lands inside the window.

We assemble the preceptor's documents and the site contact, and flag any gap between NKU's public pages and your shell before it becomes a delay. The approval decision rests with NKU's reviewers, and your request arrives ready for them. When your shell posts a new deadline mid-search, we reset the plan around it the same week. Share your track and next course through our contact page or the form further down.