BSC nursing grad's success backed by community support and a Polytechnic education
Posted: Jun 21 2023
![]()
When it was time to choose a college, nursing major Kami Floberg didn’t hesitate to pick Bismarck State College (BSC). She had always planned to stay local, and the experience gained at BSC didn’t fall short of her high expectations.
“I’ve always been a BSC girl. I didn't want to go anywhere else,” Floberg said. Despite her friends moving on to other colleges, Floberg’s mind was set on the benefits BSC had to offer—hands-on learning with affordable tuition and small class sizes.
After starting with her general education classes at BSC, applying for the nursing program was a natural next step. With a mom and grandmother who had dedicated their lives to healthcare work, Floberg wanted to continue her family’s legacy of caring for others.
“I think nursing was always kind of on my radar. With my mom being in the healthcare field and my grandmother being in the healthcare field, I think that was always something that I wanted to do,” she said. “Nursing was always my first choice.”
Once in the program, Floberg quickly learned of the demands required of a nursing student, “The program is so extensive and strenuous and it takes up a lot of your life,” she said. With a day job and classes, Floberg utilized her evenings and weekends to study and learned to take short breaks to re-energize.
Despite the rigors of the nursing program, Floberg benefited from BSC’s close-knit campus community and small class sizes, which provided her with connections to faculty, advisors and other students—a key ingredient to her success.
Floberg and her classmates would often meet at local restaurants to study and go over course material. “We would test each other and hold each other accountable. I used my classmates as support,” she said.
“When I got into nursing, I was scared. I thought I was going to sit in a huge auditorium room, like what you see on T.V., and I would just be a number,” she said. “In general, BSC has super small classes where the teachers greet you in the hallway and you’re going to be seen.”
But for Floberg, the biggest advantage to attending BSC is the college’s hands-on, polytechnic approach. She said, “With BSC, I actually had a huge advantage. The nursing program is an accelerated program. So what other people were doing in four years, I was doing in two years.”
Because of the accelerated model, BSC focuses on real-world, experiential learning, providing Floberg with the ability to be workforce ready as soon as she finished the program.
“Everything was hands-on, like labs. We had lab every Friday and staff clinicals every week, sometimes twice a week. Compared to other bachelor’s nursing degrees where they have two years of just theory, we had two years of theory and hands-on experience.”
And potential employers saw the BSC distinctive in Floberg. “We knew how to work the equipment, and we got out into the field right away. This was a huge advantage for me when I went out into the workforce. Other people mentioned it too. They said, ‘You guys hit the ground running. You are a different breed.’”
Since BSC, Floberg has gone on to complete her bachelor’s degree in nursing and is working at a women’s clinic in Bismarck.
“I love BSC, and I still love BSC so much. It's such a good school. It was the relationships that I had with everybody—the close personal relationships truly helped me graduate,” said Floberg.