In an article I wrote for Research and Theory in Nursing Practice in 2007, I discussed the need for clinical agency infrastructure to support evidence-based practice (EBP). An important component of the infrastructure needed to support clinicians' use of EBP is library/librarian support, which was the focus of that column. There are other infrastructure components, however, that are equally if not more important to achieving successful improvement outcomes and implementing best practices. One of those is the provision of mentors to facilitate clinical project teams in developing, implementing, and evaluating EBP improvement projects.Research that I conducted in the previous decade with colleagues (Fineout-Overholt, Levin, & Melnyk, 2013; Levin, Melnyk, Fineout-Overholt, Barnes, & Vetter, 2011) and my own experience supports the need for and effectiveness of mentorship for clinicians in achieving EBP clinical outcomes. In fact, the results of this research support the contention that providing didactic lectures or even interactive workshops alone are not sufficient to facilitate clinicians' integration of the principles and skills learned in a classroom environment into their practice. Frontline clinicians need mentorship to begin their journey toward EBP and quality improvement. We can extrapolate these finding to help us develop the mentorship that students need, particularly doctor of nursing practice (DNP) students, to become EBP leaders.There are several ways that a clinical agency could provide such needed support for frontline practitioners. One way is to partner with academic institutions who can provide faculty mentorship to support agency improvement initiatives. Both Pace University College of Nursing (Singleton et al., 2013) and New York University College of Nursing (NYUCN), for example, have engaged their clinical partners in DNP students' capstone projects. Each of these initiatives involves providing students with a faculty mentor and a clinical mentor from a partner agency to provide students with the support and guidance they need to carry out a meaningful improvement project for the agency to which they are assigned. Initial approaches have evolved as we have learned more about how the academic courses can relate to aspects of the clinical capstone project and the timing necessary for an improvement project to be developed, implemented, and evaluated (even in a few small tests of change).Building on my experience with the Pace University Program and my involvement with clinical agencies at that time and currently, I realized that to carry out an evidence-based improvement project that has a strong evidence base and that meets clinical agency goals, a sufficient amount of time is needed for students and/or clinicians to* Assess and understand the clinical agency in general* Come up with a theme for improvement in conjunction with an agency microsystem (Nelson, Batalden, & Godfrey, 2007) with which they are working* Search for and critically appraise the relevant evidence to guide improvement work* Develop in conjunction with the clinical microsystem team a workable protocol for implementation of the innovation* Implement the innovation and evaluate its effectiveness in achieving desired organizational outcomesIn order for student teams to initiate and complete an evidence-based improvement project in an agency that adheres to principles of improvement according to clinical microsystems (Nelson et al. …