APU's nursing campuses and the programs each one runs

Seven locations, five that teach nursing

APU's locations page names seven places across Southern California, plus online study. Nursing appears at five of them. The Orange County Regional Campus in Orange and the Murrieta Regional Campus both operate as APU sites, yet neither lists nursing among its programs.

The catalog adds an instructional location at Redlands Community Hospital, and an Office of the Regional Campuses in Azusa coordinates the regional sites. The School of Nursing's facilities page places Skills Centers at Azusa and at the High Desert, San Diego and Inland Empire campuses, and gives each of those three regional campuses a two-bed simulation lab.

The Azusa main campus and the School of Nursing

The main campus sits in the San Gabriel Mountains foothills, about 26 miles northeast of Los Angeles, split into East Campus and West Campus. The School of Nursing is on West Campus, in a building APU's facilities page calls "Building I" and the school's contact block calls "Building One." It holds classrooms, the Skills and Computer Centers, a nursing library and research lab, a simulation lab and offices.

The Hugh and Hazel Darling Library, also on West Campus, keeps the nursing collections; our student systems guide explains how regional students borrow by mail. Close to campus, the School of Nursing and the city share the Neighborhood Wellness Center.

Monrovia is the second San Gabriel Valley location. It hosts degree-completion nursing courses as well as graduate and doctoral nursing classes, and it appears on the BSN to DNP, ELM-MSN and Nursing Education location lists. The San Gabriel Valley guide covers the clinics and health systems around both sites.

Which graduate nursing programs run where

Each APU program page carries its own campus list, and those lists do not always match the catalog or APU's program finder. The table starts from the program pages; the next section sets the disagreements side by side.

Undergraduate nursing follows a separate map. The traditional BSN is taught at Azusa, the upper-division transfer and LVN options run at Monrovia, the Inland Empire and High Desert, and the SON's onboarding links handle San Diego prelicensure students separately in Complio. Those rotations are school-assigned; the BSN clinicals page explains how they work.

Where APU's campus lists disagree

Several programs carry different campus lists depending on which APU source you read.

• PMHNP. The MSN NP page lists all three NP campuses for every specialty. APU's PMHNP certificate page, along with its recent guidelines (the 2023-24 edition), keeps PMHNP specialty courses at Azusa and the Inland Empire.
• CNS. The same guidelines and the Adult-Gerontology CNS certificate page say Azusa alone. The MSN CNS page adds San Diego, and the certificate page for Pediatric CNS lists the Inland Empire as well.
• ELM-MSN. The program page and the catalog name Monrovia, San Diego and the Inland Empire, while that page's own FAQ swaps Monrovia for Azusa.
• Program finder. It shows only Azusa for the PNP-PC and Pediatric CNS certificates, and Azusa and Monrovia for the Oncology NP Fellowship, which its own page calls online.
• RN to BSN. The catalog says online only; APU's compare page adds four regional locations.

The older guidelines add one more detail: AGPCNP, PNP-PC and school nursing specialty courses were taught by videoconference, while every FNP course ran on all three NP campuses.

Why your campus shapes your clinical paperwork

Campus decides which compliance vendor and which request form you use. Complio (American DataBank) holds clinical requirements for San Diego students, and CastleBranch serves every other campus; the CastleBranch and Complio guide covers both. On the 2026-27 NP onboarding hub, NP students at Azusa or the Inland Empire use a shared Graduate Preceptor Request form, PMHNP and Nursing Education students each have their own, and the San Diego NP form was still marked "coming soon."

Your campus is also close to fixed. APU's recent guidelines (the 2023-24 edition) say students are assigned a campus at admission and that inter-campus transfers are generally not allowed; a change goes through a School of Nursing general petition that the department may decline.

The catalog also requires MSN advanced practice applicants to reside in Southern California; the RN license and residence page covers that rule.

Your campus is not your clinical site

Classes meet on a campus, but clinical hours happen where the preceptor practices. APU's guidelines encourage students to find a site or preceptor near home, and they treat a one-to-two-hour commute each way as normal. A student admitted to the Inland Empire campus who lives in Temecula, for example, is weighing Riverside County clinics, not only those around San Bernardino.

Driving distances run longer than these map estimates. Each of our Southern California region guides lists the health systems and community clinics near home, with the nearest APU campus noted.

Why APU students choose us for a search near home

We begin with two facts: where you live and which campus admitted you. Then we look for a preceptor and site that fit your APU course within a realistic drive, prepared for the right request form, so a Mission Valley student gets a San Diego County search built with Complio in mind, and an Inland Empire student gets one shaped around that campus's form and CastleBranch.

Each candidate arrives with the information APU's Graduate Placement Team needs, starting with the preceptor's credential and ending with the clinic's legal signer, plus an early read on whether an APU agreement already covers the clinic. The written clearance is APU's to give; we get your file to them complete and review-ready. Share your campus, course and ZIP code in the form below.

Questions APU students ask