Alexandra Betancourt-Pérez

Alexandra Betancourt-Peréz says she’s wanted to be a nurse for as long as she can remember.  Maybe starting when she was just eight.

That’s how old she was when her little sister was born and needed to spend time in the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit, and the nurses caring for her made an impression on the young Alexandra.

Certainly by the time she was a freshman in high school, Alexandra says, she definitely knew she very much wanted to be in the medical field, and caring for babies.

Getting into the nursing program at Sage sealed the deal. 

“It was stressful at times,” she admits. “Nursing is a difficult major. But the professors were great. It was such a positive experience, and it opened so many doors.”

Today, Alexandra is an RN working in the Albany Medical Center Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. She provides nursing care to newborn babies and support to their families.

Looking back at her time at Sage, she says what she knows was invaluable was how her instructors shared their real life experiences as nurses, and got into the nitty-gritty details. “I was so well prepared,” she says. “My professors really cared. They love nursing so they want to make sure that we’re good nurses.”

Alexandra also believes being part of the Sage Honor’s Program provided her with multiple advantages. She formed friendships with students who were studying literature, pre-law, and many other subjects, and the lively interactions she had with these students made her a more knowledgeable and better communicator. And good communication skills, she says, are critical to be a good nurse.

She certainly was a good student. 

Alexandra’s list of awards and scholarships is more than impressive: Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society, Athenian Honor Society, the M. Grace Jorgensen Nursing Achievement Award, the Dr. Olga Andruskiw Nursing Leadership Award, The Sage Colleges Trustee Excellence in Academics Scholarship, the Sage Corporate Connections Scholarship and The Sage Colleges Wilhelm Scholarship.

But what Alexandra most appreciates about her time at Sage is the way she was taught to be caring, and to be detail oriented. “When you’re in the nursing program at Sage you never forget that you will be an advocate for the patients.”

In Alexandra’s case, those patients are little babies and their worried parents. She’s doing what it certainly seems she was born to do.