Returning adult students overcome obstacles

Kathy Burud wants to help bring babies into the world; LaVay Scott wants to go on advocating for elderly people in need of care. Both of this year’s recipients of the Outstanding Undergraduate Returning Adult Student Awards at UW–Madison have overcome immense challenges to complete college degrees that were begun two to three decades ago.

When Burud was 10 years old in suburban Minneapolis, she ran “a pretend, makeshift hospital on my neighbor’s back porch, taking care of some of their nine children.” At 14, moved by her grandfather’s battle with prostate cancer, she volunteered as a candy striper at a local hospital.

Now a town of Middleton resident and mother of six, she will complete her bachelor of science in nursing this summer, when she will also be doing her clinical internship in labor and delivery at Meriter Hospital.

Burud married her high-school sweetheart, Todd, in 1973. Since she and Todd began attending what was then called Bemidji State College, her educational journey has taken her through evening and weekend programs at Normandale Community College, St. Mary’s Junior College in Minneapolis, and Edgewood College in Madison.

“Until all of our children were in school, I’ve always taken evening courses so I could be home with them during the day,” Burud says. “I consider myself very fortunate to have spent all those years with our kids and then to be able to devote myself to college full time.”

When her youngest child, Maria, started into elementary school, Burud enrolled at Madison Area Technical College. From there she was accepted into the UW–Madison School of Nursing in 1998.

“When I was accepted into the nursing program at UW–Madison at the same time that several of my fellow MATC students were turned down, I vowed to complete my degree no matter what,” Burud says. “The other applicants were also very qualified, and I felt especially fortunate to be chosen for the program when they were not.”

By this time Burud had survived a bout with thyroid cancer. Shortly after she entered the nursing program her youngest child, Maria, contracted anylosing spondylitis, a rare form of arthritis.

“Maria is one of my greatest inspirations,” Burud says. “Even while battling the illness she encouraged me, insisting I could succeed even when I doubted myself.”

Helping others seems to run in Burud’s family of origin: her father taught high-school math for nearly 30 years, her sister earned a degree in special education, and her brother is an ordained Lutheran minister. And Burud, whose two daughters and four sons range from 11 to 25 years old, also believes that the skills she developed as a mother prepared her to succeed in college and will help her in the nursing career she has dreamed of ever since creating that make-believe hospital on her neighbor’s back porch.

“During the time my grandfather was dying of cancer and I was volunteering as a candy striper, I got to see good nurses and doctors in action. The experience inspired me, and it also let me know how much I like taking care of people.”

Caring for others is also a major part of LaVay Scott’s life. Scott, who graduates this month with a bachelor’s degree in social work with a concentration in aging and will start into the master of social work program in the fall, is interning with Care Team Ministry. The agency helps 22 Madison-area churches provide nonmedical support for elderly and otherwise challenged people living at home.

Diana Bright, the agency director, herself received an Outstanding Returning Adult Student Award in 1995. Together, Scott and Bright train all the teams of home-helpers.

Scott’s route to her bachelor’s degree has also been long and circuitous. “I’ve been in college in the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, ’90s, and now in the 21st century,” she notes. She originally enrolled at the University of Minnesota but contracted rheumatic fever and had to leave school for several years. After living and studying in Southern California, where financial difficulties forced her to drop out of college again, Scott ended up in Janesville in the late ’70s. By then she and her husband, Elmer, had two sons. Scott finished a two-year degree at the UW Center-Rock County but further financial and family-health problems meant putting her educational plans on hold until the fall of 1998, when she started at UW–Madison.

Scott is the third family member to graduate from UW–Madison: her older son, Erik teaches math at a community college in suburban Seattle; her younger, Alan, intends to pursue a Ph.D. in social psychology.

“Elmer and both of our boys are super-supportive of my education,” Scott says. “Alan was a junior when I started here-he drove me to a lot of my classes and showed me the ropes.”

Certainly the help was welcome, as during these undergraduate years Scott has suffered a series of health problems that might have discouraged another student: a herniated desk, double vision, hyperthyroidism and a shattered foot that required extensive surgery and put her in a wheelchair for three months and on crutches for another three.

“My advisers-Carlotta Calmese, Lisa Fell and Judy Switzky-as well as the counselors at the McBurney Center and Francie Saposnik of the Social Work faculty have helped me a great deal in working around these challenges,” says Scott. “The flexibility of the system has also meant a lot – and having a couple of other returning adult students to commiserate with now and then!”

Established in 1981, the Outstanding Undergraduate Returning Adult Student Awards honor the increasing numbers of “nontraditional” students who return to UW–Madison to complete their undergraduate degrees while juggling the commitments and responsibilities of work and family.