COEUR d'ALENE - Soft-spoken, petite and sweet, Lita Burns is a woman with endless patience and understanding. Born and raised in Riverton, Wyo., Burns spent years working as a nurse and more recently as an administrator.

As North Idaho College's vice president for instruction, her name is at the top of the organizational chart, meaning many people depend on her abilities. But she didn't begin at the top. She worked her way up, all the way from Casper College. Her community college experience allows her to understand and relate to the students whose lives she touches every day.

"I'm a first-generation college student," she said. "So had I not started out at a community college, I don't think I would have ever been successful."

She misses the hands-on daily work of being a nurse, but her knack for caring is reflected in how much the NIC community means to her. And she finds ways to care for people through other means: her husband, her kids, her mom and the special people she finds who need a little more love in their lives. From the boom-and-bust frontier state of Wyoming to the City by the Lake, Burns has continued her passion for nursing and making the world a better place for those around her.

What's the appeal for nursing, or pediatrics, more specifically, for you?

You know, nursing is all about caring for people, at least when I went to school. That's why I went into nursing, was to really care for people. I think there are two populations of people that are the most vulnerable in nursing, and that would be the very young and the very old. To be honest with you, I debated back and forth. My summers in nursing school I spent doing geriatric care in nursing homes. We call them 'long-term facilities' now. But I worked in nursing homes and I loved my work with the elderly too, but I really had to make a decision about where I wanted to focus, and I chose children.

How did you get involved with NIC, then?

Very interesting ... one day I was at work and I was the director of nursing at Allied Health in Wyoming. I got a flier across my desk advertising this position, and I looked at it and I thought, 'That sounds like an appealing job.' I knew only a little bit about Coeur d'Alene. I had a friend who lived here and I had an aunt and her family (also in Coeur d'Alene). Interesting enough, on the President's Day in February, my aunt had died prior to that and we had a memorial service in Wyoming for her. So, that was on a Monday. The Tuesday when I got back I had this flier on my desk, and she was from Coeur d'Alene, I thought, 'That's kind of eerie.' I never really hear anything about Coeur d'Alene and then all of a sudden I had this really kind of strong connection. I needed to look into it. But I was really busy, the job was always really demanding, so I set that flier on a pile, set it aside, and didn't think about it. Then, it resurfaced on my desk and I literally only had four days until the application deadline closed. So I took it home to my husband and said, 'What do you think about this?' He said, 'Sounds great, why don't you go for it?' And so I did. I was extremely honored that I would make it through the application review process and get invited to an interview and then eventually be offered the job. It was a very high honor to receive. NIC has such a great reputation.

What motivated you to progress from nurse to the position that you are in now? Can you describe a little bit of that journey?

When you study leadership, there's always that question of whether people are born to be leaders or do people develop into leaders. I think that's something that probably happens somewhere in the middle. And I think some people like that leadership and organization role, and I think I'm one of those people. In eighth grade I was our junior high president, in ninth grade I was our junior high president, you know, you kind of start back there, getting excited about being in charge and making sure everything happens right, and helping people to be their best, and that sort of thing. I think I continued that on. Certainly, the first transition was when I decided to go into management at Denver Children's. Really, working with people. The satisfaction I get out of that is trying to help people be the best they can be in whatever they're doing, so in that setting it was helping nurses be the best they can be to take care of children to the best possible way that we could deliver care ... Then I left that setting and went into education, started teaching nursing, certainly wanted to teach students to become really good nurses ... You work with people, and you think about the influence you have and you identify issues and problems that are in your area that you want to change and make a difference, improve those conditions or whatever. Make things better for everyone. And that's what I would say inspired me to continue down that leadership road.

You've worked toward making the physical therapist assistant program, getting NIC lots of grant money and getting the Meyer Health and Science Building constructed. Do you have any more big projects or goals that you are working toward right now?

I would say at NIC and across the state, the Complete College Idaho and Complete College America initiatives are really big, and that is really making sure that students not only enter into college, but they complete with a degree that is going to be useful to them. Forever, the mission of community colleges has been about access ... Community colleges have done an excellent job of making sure underserved students have access to higher education. Now, I would say what we need to do is shift into this whole completion effort. We need to be sure that people are getting those certificates, getting those degrees, and getting them in areas that are going to help them to have a better, stronger life. To be sure that we are moving them from low-wage jobs to livable-wage jobs to higher-wage jobs, to have them feel like they have achieved what their goals are in terms of finding careers that are meaningful to them, and then being compensated in a fashion they feel is commensurate with the work they've invested.

I would say what we're going to be working really hard on at NIC is looking very closely at how we bring students in, the remediation that students need in courses, and how we can improve that remediation process so that students get from basic-level education to that college-level course and education much more quickly ... We need to find a way to progress students to the point that they are in those college-level courses and then completing their degrees and their certificates. I have some work to do around that. It's not easy. I had a great mentor who used to always say to us, 'If it was easy, we would have already done it.' And that's kind of the truth on this reforming remediation, reforming general education and getting people into completion of certificates or degrees. It is hard work, but I think we can do it. I'm really excited being able to impact that.

As the VP of instruction, what is the most rewarding part?

I have two best days of the year. OK, three. Commencement day is just, oh, when you see those students and those families pile into our tiny gym, and just be so pumped at the fact that they've accomplished what they have, there is no better feeling in the world. It's just so exciting.

Very near and dear to my heart is the nursing pinning ceremony. I did a nursing pinning myself in 1981, and since that time, I can't even begin to tell you the number of nursing pinning ceremonies I've attended. But when you go to those ceremonies, and for me, especially when I was the director of nursing, but even now, you know the lives and stories of what it took for those students to get from, 'I think I want to be a nurse,' to, 'Now I'm being pinned.' The emotion is just unreal.

Beside those two days is the first day of school when students are back on campus. There's just such a buzz of energy on this campus that you just get inspired. You think, 'That is why we're here.' We're here because those people are here because they want to learn, and it's our job to make sure they get what they want. That's the best part of this job, is working to accomplish those things.

The most challenging?

It won't surprise you to hear that the most challenging part of the job is always worrying about money. There's never enough resources to do everything you want to do. We are entering in a time period of that, because we have decreased enrollment ... it will be extremely challenging and we'll have to make some tough decisions about who gets what and when they get it and how much they get, and they're never easy decisions.

When did you find your calling as a caregiver?

My father was injured in a car accident before I was born. He became a paraplegic, so my really young years, we spent a lot of time in clinics and hospitals with my dad. My mom recalls me at 3 years old playing as a nurse, and from that point on, that goal never changed. I just always was very interested in being a nurse. Growing up, I always had the opportunity to have a special elderly friend that I sort of took care of. This little lady who lived down the street from me, I would go help her clean up her house and whatnot and she would make me doilies and give me doilies. I would take her bouquets of sweet peas because she loved sweet peas. She used to call me her little sweet pea, you know, and it was just one of those things. All through my life, it seems like I've always had a special connection with an elderly person where we just kind of had that exchange. And then, certainly, going into nursing, that's what it was all about. To be quite honest with you, I had to think about it a lot when I went into administration full time because I was really concerned about missing that ability to take care of someone. Even today, I have a special elderly woman in my life who I find ways to take care of. It's all good.

So, you interact with a lot of people on a daily basis. Is there something about you that they might not know, or that they'd be surprised to learn? A special ability or superpower?

No (laughs). Gosh, I'm really pretty boring. You all did a wonderful feature on my husband who collects beer cans. It was on the front page of the paper just about a year ago. It was way cool (laughs). I live with somebody who has a cool hobby. Does that count?