Norfolk State University Department of Nursing and Allied Health

Norfolk State University's Department of Nursing and Allied Health sits in the College of Science, Engineering and Technology on Park Avenue in Norfolk, two miles from Sentara Norfolk General Hospital and a short drive from the largest naval medical complex in the country. For Black students weighing a BSN, that geography is the point. You can complete your prerequisites and your final semester of preceptorship inside the same Hampton Roads health system, then sit for NCLEX-RN and start practicing in the city you trained in.

The Traditional Pre-licensure BSN is a 121-credit degree. The first 52 credits are prerequisites: anatomy and physiology, microbiology, chemistry, statistics, English composition, and the general education core, and they can be taken at NSU or transferred in. After admission you move into five consecutive semesters of nursing courses, with a minimum of 500 direct care and simulation hours required to graduate. The program caps simulation at 100 of those hours, so the bulk of your clinical experience happens at the bedside in real hospitals, not in a lab.

Admission is competitive and rolling within a hard calendar. The department accepts a cohort each fall and a smaller cohort each spring. Fall applications are due March 1, spring applications are due October 5. Applicants need a cumulative NSU GPA of 3.0 or higher, a grade of C or better in every prerequisite, and a score of 75 percent or higher in every section of the HESI A2 entrance exam. You are allowed two HESI attempts in an academic year. Castle Branch handles the criminal background check and 10-panel drug screen that the clinical partners require before you set foot on a unit.

Accreditation is the question every prospective nursing student should ask, and the answer matters more than rankings. The BSN program is accredited by the Accreditation Commission for Education in Nursing, the same body that accredits most HBCU nursing programs in the country. ACEN's public record lists Norfolk State as initially accredited in March 1985 and currently holding continuing accreditation with conditions, following a September 2025 site visit. The next comprehensive review is scheduled for fall 2033. The program is also approved by the Virginia Board of Nursing, which is the licensing authority that has to clear every Virginia-trained nurse to take NCLEX-RN.

Licensure outcomes have been steady. NSU's Office of the Provost publishes annual licensure performance data, and the most recent figure on the public dashboard shows an 85.7 percent first-time NCLEX-RN pass rate for the Traditional BSN cohort, comfortably above the Virginia Board of Nursing's 80 percent achievement threshold. The department reports first-time pass rates above 85 percent across the prior five years, with cohort sizes in the mid-twenties, which is typical for a small, selective HBCU BSN program.

Clinical placements are the muscle of this program. Norfolk State partners with Sentara Health, the dominant integrated health system in southeastern Virginia, with rotations at Sentara Norfolk General and Sentara Leigh. Pediatric clinicals run through Children's Hospital of the King's Daughters, the only freestanding pediatric hospital in Virginia. Bon Secours Hampton Roads opens medical-surgical and women's health rotations at DePaul and Maryview. Chesapeake Regional Medical Center, Naval Medical Center Portsmouth, and the Hampton VA Medical Center round out the affiliate list, which means students see veteran care, active-duty military medicine, and community hospital practice before they graduate. Clinical days run 6 to 12 hours, with some evening and weekend rotations.

Tuition is one of the strongest arguments for NSU. Full-time in-state undergraduates pay $9,910 in tuition and mandatory fees for the 2025-2026 academic year. Out-of-state students pay $21,412. The published total cost of attendance, which adds room, board, books, transportation, and personal expenses, lands at $27,551 in-state on-campus and $39,053 out-of-state on-campus. Ninety-one percent of NSU undergraduates receive grant or scholarship aid, and the institutional average aid package is roughly $12,969, which closes a significant share of the gap for Pell-eligible students. Nursing students also have access to Virginia Department of Health workforce scholarships and federal Nurse Faculty Loan Program funds if they plan to teach.

For working RNs, the RN to BSN completion track is fully online and runs through the same department. It is the path most Hampton Roads associate-degree nurses take when their hospital tightens its BSN-in-ten policy, and it carries the same ACEN accreditation as the prelicensure track.

Student support inside the department is hands-on. Sandra Olanitori serves as the nursing recruiter and academic advisor, Desma Lans coordinates admissions, and Dr. Jamela Martin chairs the department. Pre-nursing students meet with advisors before declaring the major, and the department runs HESI A2 prep sessions every cycle. Outside the department, NSU's TRIO programs, the Office of Academic Success, the Counseling Center, and the Lyman Beecher Brooks Library extend the safety net.

If you are a Black student looking at nursing schools in Virginia, Norfolk State offers something the larger predominantly white institutions in the state cannot. You learn nursing in a department where most of your faculty, most of your classmates, and the majority of the patients in your clinical rotations look like you. You leave with a BSN, an NCLEX-RN, and a clinical network already wired into the systems that staff Hampton Roads.

Contact the department at (757) 823-9013, email Desma Lans at dblans@nsu.edu for admission questions, or start the application at nsu.edu/nursing/b-s-nursing-traditional. Application materials must be in by March 1 for fall enrollment.