The WilmU program handbook: what it decides and what to look up

What WilmU says the handbook controls

The clearest public reference sits in the College's credentialing policy on background checks and drug screens. For undergraduates the timing is fixed: the first core course. For graduate NP, Leadership and DNP students, the checks go through the College's designated credentialing system ahead of any clinical experience, and the handbook's course progression sets exactly when. In other words, the handbook decides when your clearance clock starts.

That timing carries real weight. Under the same policy, a student who declines the checks, or whose finding is still open once the review ends, is barred from clinical courses, and that can stop progress through the whole program. The steps are laid out in the background check and drug screen guide, and the finished result, which WilmU calls clinical credentialing clearance, has a page of its own.

What to look up first

Several practicum details are absent from WilmU's public pages. If your edition of the handbook covers them, these are the entries to find and flag before your first practicum semester. If it does not, each one becomes a question for your chair.

Handbook checklist

• The exact course or term when clinical credentialing clearance must be complete
• Any form or step for proposing a preceptor or site, and who reviews it
• Lead times: how far ahead a site should be confirmed
• Preceptor qualifications beyond Delaware's rule for APRN program preceptors
• Whether an employer, a supervisor or a relative may precept you
• How clinical hours are logged, signed and evaluated
• Which immunization records graduate students provide
• Whether each NP practicum follows the 7-week block calendar or the full 15-week semester
• What happens if you move to another state mid-program
• What happens if a site ends a rotation early

Note the page or section numbers as you go. When you write to faculty later, quoting the section you are asking about gets a quicker, sharper answer. The open questions, sorted by the person who answers each one, are in questions for your program chair.

When the handbook and a public page disagree

WilmU's public pages already disagree with one another in places, so expect the handbook to differ from something you have read. The MSN-FNP page lists its format as Online, yet it also mentions face-to-face seminars, two each year, for students in practicum. Older catalogs gave the FNP 600 and then 700 clinical hours, where the 2026-27 catalog gives 750. DNP curriculum pages give 500 hours for APRNs, while the DNP overview says 1,500.

Settle none of these by guesswork. Write to the chair who owns the topic, name both sources, and ask which one governs your cohort. Send it from your MyWilmU student email, the account WilmU's instructors, advisors and offices use, so the reply stays on record. The hour conflicts sit side by side on the clinical hours page.

How we use your handbook in a preceptor search

Your handbook is the most WilmU-specific document you hold, so we build the search around it. Share the sections on preceptor qualifications, site rules and timing, and we screen every candidate against them, on top of Delaware's APRN preceptor licensing rule and the RN license your clinical state calls for.

The result is a preceptor and site that already fit the rules your program wrote, with the clinician's license, credentials and contact details in order before the practicum begins. That holds whether faculty are guiding your placement or you opened the search yourself. Each preceptor and site still goes to WilmU faculty for their decision, and what we hand over is built to clear that review without a second round. Send your details through the contact page.