CUW's Post-MSN DNP: residency hours you choose, a mentor you secure

What the residency is for

The Post-MSN DNP has no clinical courses of the MSN kind and none of the Project Practicum Immersions that the Post-BSN DNP uses. Its field work is the residency, which the catalog describes as experiential learning with preceptors or mentors, aimed at leadership skills and at the DNP Project you build in NURS 9040 DNP Project I and finish in NURS 9041 DNP Project II.

That turns the mentor into a project decision as much as a scheduling one. The residency hours feed the project, and the project is what you present at the final cohort meeting on campus. A mentor inside an organization with a live quality, safety or access problem gives you something real to assess, change and measure.

The rest of the 30 credits is coursework: NURS 8003, NURS 8010, NURS 8015 and NURS 8021, plus three business courses, BUS 5100, BUS 5610 and BUS 5840.

Working out your own hour target

Start from the document that records your MSN clinical hours. Under the 2019 to 2025 rule those hours counted toward the 1,000, and the program added at least 500 of its own. Anyone whose MSN documented fewer than 500 supervised hours would have needed more than 500 in the program to close the gap.

Backgrounds vary widely in this cohort. CUW admits NPs, CNSs, CNMs and CRNAs as well as advanced nurse administrators, and a master's from another school, or from CUW in an earlier era, may carry a different documented count. CUW's own MSN asked for 600 hours in its 2013-15 handbooks and 720 across the 2020-21 and 2021-22 catalogs before settling at 750.

Faculty check residency hours, too. CUW's 2022 page said faculty may contact the mentor at any time to verify them, and the undated DNP residency log coded each entry as clinical (C) or translational project (T). Keep the log current from the first week, and see clinical logs and evaluations for the archived forms.

The cohort calendar

The program runs as an online cohort in eight-week courses across five semesters, and CUW says it can be finished in two years. A cohort is admitted each spring for an August start, with a July 1 priority deadline; that date was March 1 in 2020-21 and moved later each year until 2023-24.

The program page calls the classes fully online, and the catalog adds two fixed meetings: an orientation by Zoom before the program starts, and a mandatory closing cohort meeting, held on campus as you graduate, at which you present your DNP Project. The first meeting was held on the Mequon campus through 2023-24 and moved to Zoom in 2024-25, although the program page captured in March 2025 still said on campus. Follow the catalog and your admission materials.

Today's catalog prints no completion limit for this doctorate; the 2020-21 edition set a two-year time frame. If work or family stretches your plan, confirm the current policy with your advisor.

How our desk sets up a Post-MSN residency

Residency hours in areas of your choice give you wide room, and the securing is still yours. Our placement desk starts from your project idea and your hour target, then finds an agency and a mentor who fit both.

• Organizations near you whose needs match your project topic, from primary care practices to health system departments
• A mentor with the academic credentials and the time CUW's faculty look for, briefed on the logging and verification ahead
• An early flag if the agency will need its first clinical contract with CUW
• A second option ready if your first mentor changes roles partway through the project

Send your project topic, your documented MSN hours and your state using the form below; a residency plan comes back from your placement advisor. The full sequence is on how it works.