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Nursing student named St. Olaf Commencement speaker

Jean Mullins '07
May 26, 2006

St. Olaf senior student Breanna Peterson has been selected to address the Class of 2006 at this year's Commencement ceremony Sunday. Her speech, "Living with Purpose and Passion," will address the meaning and importance of a liberal arts education and the responsibility that comes with it.

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St. Olaf senior Breanna Peterson plans to earn a master's degree in health policy and management at Emory University.
Peterson will graduate with a double major in nursing and in public health: policy and reform, a major she created through St. Olaf's Center for Integrative Studies. Peterson explains that she has known since middle school that she wanted a career to serve others. "I have found nursing to be a way in which I serve people during the most vulnerable moments of their lives and promote change," she says.

Peterson praises the academic experiences she has had while at St. Olaf. "My clinical experiences through nursing have taught me humility and compassion," she says. "And through my independent major I have had the opportunity both to study and to participate in health care policy and reform."

Peterson has performed extensive volunteer work in the Northfield area, working at a free clinic in Dundas, at the Northfield Retirement Center and working as a youth group director and Sunday school teacher at the Northfield Evangelical Free Church.

After graduation, Peterson will get married and attend graduate school at Emory University in Atlanta, where she will study to become a family nurse practitioner and earn a master?s in public health policy and management.

Peterson's parents are David and Mary Ellen Peterson of Ames, Iowa.

Contact David Gonnerman at 507-786-3315 or gonnermd@stolaf.edu.