it looks like you've seen the college change obviously from the beginning
um you know when did you move part of the college up to the community
services building where we are today, that happened after I left? Um I
think they had one office or two offices over here during that last year I
was here but they just simply simply ran out of space.
What do you think about the move that they're they're working on now to
move the whole college downtown? I think it's already there and that I
hope it works. Um I think that it will be a while before the whole
building is utilized as they hope because it is a change and but maybe it
will draw more students from the phoenix area.
It looks it's a beautiful building, certainly much different from having
it on the college campus here. Well yes and I have a personal preference.
I would like to see nursing students being able to intermingle
satisfactorily satisfactorily with the rest of the students in the
university because I think it broadens their viewpoint in their whole
aspect of of what education is about.
Did did you have while you were here, the campus on the west side, they
started a campus on the west side. Yes while I was still here and that was
very successful and it's still very successful. It's growing a lot and it
had its own school of nursing. It was it was this called the College of
Nursing A. S. U. West. So they taught most of the courses on the upper
level the for the students. So they had student practice there and in that
general area and there's some very good hospitals there in that area to
which allow the students to get the kind of practice they need there. And
so of course the health department is everywhere in the county. Well we're
here today about there being such a shortage of nurses. That's true. How
do you feel about that? I think that it would be nice if there weren't
nurses. Uh But what do you mean? Why do you think there is a shortage of
nurses? People are becoming more aware of their health needs? I think for
one thing and hospitals are growing and and people are getting older and
the older population, do you need more
attention to their health? I think that's not for all of the population.
But that's true generally and
there just aren't enough people who are interested in going into nursing
or it was a few years back and now that it's a popular thing to do, the
schools are all receiving more applications than they can take care of. So
do you think that schools need to to expand and be able to, I think
they'll have to or there will be more shortages. You were at the college
during the time in the late 70s when women, more women started becoming
doctors instead of nurses, did you see a change then when women were more
able to become doctors? Yes I think that's true That didn't happen and and
still is happening and that's fine. You know I think it's good that we
have our own doctors and even Hilary is running for president.
So they're women are getting more and more into every occupation. Do you
think women make better doctors than men sometimes?
Well there are male doctors that are fine and they're female doctors that
are fine. But I don't know do you think that hurt the nursing profession
when women started becoming doctors? That it was kind of like maybe maybe
that's part of the problem.
But I think that many other occupations became available to women and they
run this perspective of what they might be able to do. So there were more
women in various areas then there were
when you became a nurse there weren't that many options. I know you
probably were actually, I wanted to be an aviator. I thought it would be
wonderful to fly an airplane and my mother said no. So that's settled that.
But uh and I thought about becoming a teacher but I really wanted to be a
nurse. But those were the two professions that were acceptable, generally
speaking teaching and and uh at least where I lived, there were not any
other avenues for women very much they were secretaries and they were
teachers or are even nursing was limited in those days.
So how do you feel about all the changes that you've seen. Well I think
change is wonderful if it's if it's good change and uh otherwise I I feel
all of society is constantly trying to adjust all the changes we have,
don't you think? Yeah.
Did you ever think that you'd see a s you grow to become as big as it is?
Well, I didn't think about it, but it certainly is has grown, hasn't it?
And the programs are really very well thought through. I think it's a
great university.
Can you sort of just describe the changes that you've seen that just at
the College of nursing?
Well, it's it's grown larger certainly. And otherwise, I think the basics
are the same, only there are different approaches to educating the
students in different areas. And I think that's fine too. What kind of
different approaches? Well,
it used to be that there had to be a a faculty immediately with a student
all the time or merely all the time. But now the students are given
directions and given an introduction to an area and are more on their own
and then they report back to their instructor and that's fine. As long as
the students have adequate preparation
has the whole field of nursing, it seems like become more complicated as
medicine has become more sophisticated.
I think the basics in nursing remain the same. Um The nurse is able to
understand and do more now than they were earlier days and it was more
sort of in the early days more folk medicine because they didn't know more
and the doctors didn't know more either. What are the basics of nursing
competency and understanding health and illness and what kinds of things
promote health versus uh the things that promote illness and being able to
be knowledgeable about the new developments in medicine and in nursing to
take care of the patient and two be available at the level that the
patient needs to be helped.
What's the best memory that you have of A. S. U.
They were all very pleasant memories. I really don't have any complaints.
So I don't have any worst memories.
Well it was it was a wonderful place to work for me. I liked it and I like
the people I worked with and the the people that I didn't work with too
much. For instance, I think that the people in the graduate college were
so helpful when we were developing that masters program. They were just
wonderful. And uh so it was helpful to the whole college and therefore to
the whole community.
Are there any particular students that stand out in your mind? Oh yes,
many of them. Well we've had some wonderful indian students who I was so
pleased that that they were able to be in and do the master's program and
then become leaders themselves in their own areas and that I'm
particularly impressed by then, we didn't have very many black students
and I'm sorry about that. I don't know why, I guess the recruitment, it
wasn't geared towards towards the black student. I don't know, we had some
which was good and we had students from different countries and that was
an exciting, exciting thing for the whole college because we learned from
them and they learned from us. Why would they come from other countries?
Because they hear about the program,
Do they come to become nurses here or to go home and to go home? Mainly
about mexican american nurses. And we've had plenty of those and they've
all been wonderful. They've gone back to their communities or stayed in
the community there in and or just sought new jobs depending upon their
preference for and their reason for being here in the first place.
How would you like to be remembered by the people of the college nursing?
Um
Well, if anybody chooses to remember me, I would like them to think of me
as as someone who was a friend of theirs.
I suppose. I have had a couple of people who didn't like me very well, but
I don't know. I mean everybody does if you're in a position of
responsibility, but
they could think of me as they wish.
Is there anything that you accomplished? I think you did a lot of things
over the years that your proudest.
I think um probably getting the program going in the first place when I
first came back day issue. and I think that was really, we really worked
on on that, that those few of us who were here and also the establishment
of the master's program which was a hard thing to do. Initially we had to
put a lot of work in on that and then the clinic,
the development of the clinic and the whole concept of having the students
be able to become a nurse practitioner.
Was that pretty new when you started? Yes, it was.
That's different. That's different than a physician's assistant. Yes, it
is because they have a broader education then the physician physician's
assistant, they have the whole earlier Masters Bachelor Bachelor of
Science in Nursing and the master's in nursing in addition to the other
material that they get as being a nurse practitioner.
Did you ever miss actually doing hands on nursing as you became more
involved in running the college? No, because I did occasionally get into
that. Uh I can't say that. I didn't really miss it because I was so
involved with other things which which helped other people to do those
things.
What kind of advice would you give to young people that are starting off
trying to decide what they want to do as a career, what they want to do
with goodbyes? Well, I think that that if they aren't sure they need to
make up their mind if they can and if they can't then most of them do
enroll in college And while they're trying to decide, I mean many of them
do what they really want to do and I think if they really pick something
that they like and they want to do they should devote their efforts to
finding out what's entailed in that and to make a decision and and go for
it.
I think I've covered most of the questions I had for you. Is there
anything you wanted to tell us that I didn't ask? You know, I think you've
covered everything and more bob. Did you have anything you wanted to ask
you? You mentioned doing quite a bit of research. Yeah.
If some of that research happened in the issue or probably yes, I did
publish most of the research. I was oh okay. Yes. Um um I did was involved
with research at at the University of Chicago. And the topic that I did.
My main research in was
the hospitalized child and three I had three groups, 1 who had a sit her
with her or someone who was a mother substitute and the child who had his
mother with with her or him and the child who had nobody there to comfort
him. And I did a comparison of those three groups. And it took me forever
to get it done because I observed in the hospital recorded those
observations and then um Compared to three groups and I found that the
child who did not have anybody with them, of course, you might expect, was
very sad and lonely child. And the child who had the substitute mother
with her or him. Where's?