HCC Dale Mabry Campus Student Defense Lawyer | Health Sciences

Hillsborough College’s health-sciences teaching is at the Dale Mabry Campus. The college’s own 2025 Factbook records that the four-storey, 62,670 square foot building opened in September 2019 “houses the Emergency Medical Services, Medical Laboratory Science, Nursing, and Respiratory Care programs”; dental hygiene and the college’s Bachelor of Science in Nursing are here too.

Why a health-programme dismissal is a different case

A student removed from a selective health programme is rarely removed by the student conduct office. The decision comes from a programme committee applying a programme handbook — a document carrying progression rules, clinical-performance standards, attendance limits, drug-screen provisions and automatic dismissal clauses that the college-wide conduct code never mentions. It usually has its own appeal ladder and its own deadlines, and those deadlines are often shorter than the college-wide ones. Where the two documents conflict, the handbook is what the programme applies — but the college code appeal should be preserved rather than abandoned.

The stakes are also different. Clinical hours do not transfer readily, cohort places are limited, and admission to another programme requires disclosure of the dismissal. For licensure-track programmes there is a further layer: a dismissal recorded as involving dishonesty, a patient-safety concern or a positive drug screen becomes a disclosure item on a licensure application years later. The wording of the decision letter therefore matters as much as the outcome, and it is worth negotiating.

Hillsborough’s associate degree nursing programme passed 68.63% of 322 first-time candidates in 2025, against a statutory floor of 76.05%. What Fla. Stat. section 464.019(5) requires of a programme below that floor, and what section 464.019(5)(c) obliges a programme on probation to disclose to its students, is set out on the Florida nursing programme pass-rate page.

Why the pass rate matters to an individual case

It does not make a dismissal unlawful. What it does is explain the pattern. A programme under pressure to raise its first-time pass rate has an institutional reason to remove students it predicts will fail, and progression rules get applied more rigidly than they read on the page. That is a legitimate thing to put to a college, and it is a reason to look closely at whether the rule applied to this student is the rule as written or a stricter version of it.

Venue

Hillsborough County is in the Middle District of Florida, Tampa Division, under Local Rule 1.04(a).

This is a public college, so Fla. Stat. section 1006.60(3) applies in full — including subsection (3)(g), the right to be accompanied by counsel at a disciplinary proceeding, and subsection (3)(b), which puts the burden on the college rather than the student. What those rights do and do not include is set out on the Florida student defence page.

What can a student defense lawyer do here?

  • Get the current programme handbook and the edition in force at enrolment, and identify which one the college is applying.
  • Separate the academic-progression question from any conduct allegation — different processes, different deadlines.
  • Press on the wording of the decision letter, because it follows the student into licensure and transfer applications.
  • Preserve both the programme appeal and the college-wide appeal, and work to the shorter deadline.
  • Keep the 30-day certiorari window under Fla. R. App. P. 9.100(c) open while the internal appeal runs.

The main college page is here: Hillsborough Community College student defence.

Other Florida colleges

Every school writes its own dismissal, appeal and conduct rules, and the filing deadlines are rarely the same from one campus to the next. These pages set out the procedure at other Florida colleges:

Common questions about HCC Dale Mabry Campus cases

Which HCC campus teaches nursing?

The Dale Mabry Campus. The college’s 2025 Factbook records that its health sciences building houses the EMS, medical laboratory science, nursing and respiratory care programmes, along with dental hygiene and the BSN.

Does a low programme pass rate help my case?

Not on its own — it does not make a dismissal unlawful. It does explain why progression rules may be applied more strictly than they are written, which is a fair point to put to the college and a reason to check the rule actually applied against the rule as published.

Who decides a nursing dismissal at HCC?

Ordinarily a programme committee applying the nursing handbook, not the student conduct office. The handbook carries progression and clinical-performance rules the college-wide code does not mention.

Which court hears a Dale Mabry case?

The Middle District of Florida, Tampa Division, because Hillsborough County is assigned to Tampa by Local Rule 1.04(a).