Faculty Feature: Assistant Professor Peggy Bolster

When Assistant Professor of Nursing Peggy Bolster first arrived at Clinton Community College as a student, she wasn’t planning to become a nurse. She was a lifelong reader who happened to be drawn to a medical terminology course.

“I’m much more of a reader,” she said. “I love words and vocabulary. Medical terminology is all words, so I ended up loving the class.”

That course sparked an unexpected shift for the former nonprofit professional, whose three children were preparing for college at the time.

“I was always interested in health care,” she said, “and I thought, maybe I should go to nursing school.”

The path wasn’t linear. Bolster applied to Clinton’s nursing program and landed on the waitlist.

“I was deeply offended,” she said with a laugh. “I just didn’t have a clue.”

Determined, she bought a dosage‑calculation workbook, studied all summer and secured her spot. But the start was bumpy. Nursing school felt foreign until her clinical rotation in mental health changed everything.

“I loved it,” she said. “When the mental health class started, I thought, this is the place for me. I even thought I’d like to teach it someday, even though that would mean going back for a bachelor’s and a master’s.”

Bolster graduated from Clinton in 2014, began working in psychiatry and soon moved into nurse management.

A chance conversation at the hospital shifted her direction again. Clinton needed an adjunct mental health instructor. She didn’t yet have her bachelor’s degree, but she enrolled immediately and was hired while completing it.

By fall 2018, Bolster was teaching as an adjunct. A year later, she was invited to join full time. She accepted the role just six weeks before the COVID‑19 pandemic pushed classes online.

“It was a lot at once,” she said. “A new job, a pandemic, and I had also enrolled in a master’s program. But I stuck with it. I love teaching here.”

Today, Bolster teaches both mental health nursing, which she calls her passion, and medical‑surgical nursing. Teaching, she says, gives her a sense of purpose she didn’t experience earlier in her career.

“I believe in nursing, and nursing matters,” she said. “If you could eliminate everything and keep one thing, it would be caring for people. That’s what we do—as nurses, as loved ones, as human beings.”

Having been an adult learner herself, Bolster understands the challenges her students face.

“It doesn’t feel like that long ago,” she said. “This program is really hard. I remember that, and I think it helps me connect with students in a real way.”

Her ties to the North Country began long before her time at Clinton. Growing up in New Jersey, she spent summers visiting her brothers at Camp Dudley in Westport. A last‑minute trip to say goodbye to her younger brother before college turned into meeting the man who would become her husband.

“He had a carpentry business here,” she said. “So, I moved to Westport. We’ve been here for about 35 years. Our kids were born and raised here, and my daughter even came to Clinton for nursing.”

Bolster is candid about the rigor of Clinton’s nursing program and its value.

“When students finish their associate degree in nursing, they’re eligible to sit for the RN boards and go right into the workforce,” she said. “Employers often help pay for the bachelor’s later. For many students, especially mature learners, it’s a smart, affordable path.”

To prospective students, her message is simply to consider Clinton first.

“If we offer the degree or gen‑eds you need, this is the best deal around,” she said. “People here will support you.”

For Bolster, that promise of support aligns naturally with Clinton’s motto, We Work.

“If you come here, we’ll prepare you to work,” she said. “This place works. For students. For families. For our community.”