The AACN gives the Sister Bernadette Armiger Award to nurses in the US who show outstanding leadership in education at the collegiate level.

[3] She attended St. Martin's Grade School and then when the family moved switched to the parish of Our Lady of Lourdes in Utica, Maryland, both run by Daughters of Charity.

"[9] She gave people cards with the saying, "...thus we will merrily meet in heaven..."[10] After earning her master's degree in 1947, she moved into leadership quickly, working as an assistant professor of graduate nursing students and directing undergraduates at Catholic University of America's Providence division at Providence Hospital, a prominent medical facility founded by her religious congregation.

[13] Then she went on to serve on the faculty at St. Joseph's Hospital School of Nursing in Emmitsburg, Maryland from 1955 to 1963, before going to doctoral studies in New York.

[14] On August 1, 1968, after completing her doctorate, she became Dean of the Niagara University College of Nursing, a post she held for seven years, until 1975.

[18] That same year she raised 1.2 million for a building for the nursing school, and she worked on its design, which the College and University Conference later cited for excellence.

Armiger and two others, Frances Wollner, MSN, and Mary Kornguth, MS, founded Niagara University's Nursing Honor Society in 1975, in order to become eligible for Sigma Theta Tau.

She told reporter Weldon Wallace of The Baltimore Sun that sisters and priests are expected to "have it all together--spiritually, emotionally, intellectually..."[22] Her center would address broad-range concerns from depression to alcoholism to career and vocational suitability.

Besides the award, Niagara University also has a Sister Bernadette Armiger Memorial Fund for graduate studies in nursing.