Dreams don’t become reality by happenstance. It takes courage to pursue them, determination to breakthrough challenges, and a supportive environment to help you achieve. Sarah Burr ’25 has lived this, and thanks to the Nano-Nagle Online School of Nursing at St. Çï¿ûÊÓƵ, she is one step closer to her dream – becoming a nurse practitioner.
“I want to be able to fully take care of patients' health and to support them in meeting their health goals,” Burr said. “Becoming a registered nurse is the first step.” A step that took more than a decade to accomplish.
Choosing to pursue nursing
Burr says the call to health care is engraved in her heart. In sixth grade, her father began a battle with stage IV non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Watching her mother care for her father molded her into the compassionate caretaker she strives to be every day for her patients.
“I think it was almost burned into me that it's your job to care of people. It's your job to look after other people. And not just in the sense of being a mom, but in the sense of even taking care of strangers.”
After obtaining a two-year degree in unit healthcare coordination in 2010, Burr quickly realized she wanted to do more. She became a certified nursing assistant and then earned a degree as a licensed practicing nurse. She has been an LPN for the past 13 years. Since then, she's tried to take the next step in her nursing journey – earning a BSN; but finding a program that fits her life has been difficult.
Overcoming Challenges
Alongside working towards her goal of becoming an RN, BSN, Burr has been growing her family. Her journey through motherhood has been filled with joy, welcoming four sons into the world; but it has also been challenging, and filled with tremendous loss.
Two of Burr’s children were born without a stomach, bladder, and kidneys. They passed away shortly after birth. She also lost twins through a round of IVF. And her oldest living son was born with a genetic anomaly that resulted in daily doctor's visits for the first two months of his life, and multiple surgeries. All of this occurred while she was trying to earn her BSN.
“It was crazy,” she reflected. “I had kids while I was in school. I didn't even miss a day of school. I would deliver on, like a weekend, or we happened to be off on a break, and then would go back to school, and I’d be pumping on the way to school. It was crazy.”
Crazy and unsustainable. Burr started an in-person BSN program shortly after completing her LPN, but the rigors of her home life wouldn’t allow her to continue.
“I was leaving work here to go down to Rochester, Minnesota, to go to school in person, and I just felt I couldn't do that. I couldn't be away from my family like that.”
Burr had every reason to give up on her dream. To take care of her boys and serve her community as an LPN. But she wanted more. No matter how long it took to get there.
“Any burden that I've taken on, any burden that I've had in my life, has not been enough to say, ‘Sarah, you shouldn't be a nurse. Sarah, you should just be a stay-at-home mom. You should just be happy with your LPN.’ Those burdens, those traumatic events, have never been greater than my call to be a nurse. This is what I want to do.’”
Finding a Supportive Environment
At 36, 13 years in the making, Burr earned her BSN from the Nano-Nagle Online School of Nursing at St. Çï¿ûÊÓƵ, a graduate of the spring 2025 class. Her degree comes from a school whose physical location is around 300 miles from her home in Cannon Falls, Minnesota. But the connections, education, and experience she gained from her online degree are beyond anything she could have expected.
“You never feel like there’s not somebody you can talk to,” Burr said of the online nursing program. “You’re made aware of all the people and all the resources so you know who to communicate with. I never felt lost or worried.”
The online element was essential to Burr’s success. With four children to care for, and a full-time job to maintain, she needed a program that offered flexibility.
“That’s why I’m such a promoter of the online nursing program at St. Ambrose,” Burr said. “You can be at your job every day. You can be at your kids' athletic functions, or their choir concerts. You can make it to all that because of the way LPN-BSN is set up. It offers so much for a for a single parent, for a working parent.”
Aside from the flexibility of the program, the quality of the education is beyond measure for Burr who expected to complete clinicals in assisted living facilities and to be an observer. Instead, she found herself in places like a neurology ICU and a pediatric medical-surgical unit and has physically placed IVs and hung IV bags.
“The opportunities that we get through St Ambrose actually prepare us to be nurses. Most of my friends left nursing school and they didn't know how to start an IV. That is completely unacceptable.
“I have all the confidence in the world to throw in an IV – to throw in an 18 gage IV. There is not a person I know that came out of nursing school that can say that. St. Ambrose offered that opportunity. We are blessed to have this school.”
Burr learned about the online LPN-BSN through co-workers enrolled in the program. She says the skills she and her peers have gained are especially essential for nurses like them who work in less populated areas.
“We're more prepared to work in a rural community where we don't have everything,” she said. “I can tell you right now I am way better off as a nurse and way more prepared to take boards and to apply this to real world situations.”
Burr works at a primary care office in Canton Falls, a town of roughly 4,000. Despite having an ER in town, her facility, she says, often serves as an urgent care.
“People feel comfortable coming to us. So I’ve had a straight code of a patient having a heart attack. We get a lot of hand lacerations. We get a lot of fractures. We see the gamut.”
Thanks to her St. Ambrose education, Burr is ready to face every challenge and to continue working towards that ultimate goal of becoming a nurse practitioner. Though she’s faced challenges on her way to earning a BSN, Burr says every moment has been worth it. And she’s grateful to have found a program that made her dream attainable.
“If you put your mind to something and you have a goal, you can achieve it; no matter how hard you think it is, no matter how hard life can be,” Burr said.
Burr will take her boards this summer to become a registered nurse. She then plans to complete limited scope training, which will allow her to take x-rays. After that, she’ll enroll in a nurse practitioner program.
“This is my purpose,” Burr said, reflecting on her journey to become a nurse. “This is why I was put on this earth – to help others.”
