When Boise State University offers an educational activity across state lines, we are legally obligated to secure authorization from the state where the activity occurs. Our membership in the National Consortium for State Authorization Reciprocity Agreements (NC-SARA) secures that authorization, allowing us to offer educational activities to students in other NC-SARA member states. These educational activities include experiential learning placements, such as clinicals, internships, practicums, student teaching, and other similar activities–these are referred to by NC-SARA as Out of State Learning Placements (OOSLP). If your academic program offers one or more learning placements, that can be completed for credit, out of state, then your program has an OOSLP (out-of-state learning placement).

The number and extent of such placements are of great interest and concern to educators, practitioners, licensing bodies, and state regulators. Many states want to ensure that their in-state students have an equal opportunity of securing learning placements within the state and that out-of-state students are not taking said opportunities away. Therefore, no more than 10 students from an individual academic program can be placed simultaneously at one clinical, internship, student teaching, or practicum site, and it is the responsibility of the academic program and institution to ensure that does not happen.

Additionally, in order to maintain compliance with NC-SARA, the University is required to annually report data about our distance education offerings, including OOSLPs, to NC-SARA each June. This OOSLP data is collected from your program each fall semester by Institutional Effectiveness(IE) for Workers' Compensation purposes, IE then shares it with the Regulatory Affairs Coordinator to report said data to NC-SARA.

It is important to note that State Authorization is focused on national compliance efforts. If your learning placement takes place outside of the United States and its territories, it does not need to be reported to NC-SARA.

If you have further questions about OOSLPs or State Authorization, please contact the eCampus Regulatory Affairs Coordinator at state-authorization@boisestate.edu.