Three finalists for the position of dean of the Washington State University Intercollegiate College of Nursing have been invited to visit WSU.
The candidates are Nancy Ridenour, dean and professor at the College of Nursing at Illinois State University; Mary A. Nies, assistant vice president of health sciences for research in community health and professor of nursing at the State University of New York, Stony Brook; and Patricia Butterfield, professor and chair of the Department of Psychosocial and Community Health Nursing at the University of Washington.
Ridenour is scheduled to visit Jan. 9-12; Nies Jan. 16-19; and Butterfield Jan. 21-24. While numerous discussions and interviews will be scheduled during the visits, all faculty and staff are invited to attend the open sessions. The open sessions will be announced through WSU Announcements as soon as the schedules are finalized. Meetings will be held in Spokane, Vancouver and Pullman.
Ridenour’s prior positions include associate dean for education, associate dean for practice programs and practice development and associate dean for the graduate program at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center. In addition, she was assistant professor at the University of Colorado.
She has held numerous leadership positions in the American Nurses Association, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Public Health Association, Sigma Theta Tau International, Society of Primary Care Policy Fellows, National Organization of Nurse Practitioner Faculties and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She is a certified family nurse practitioner, maintaining an active clinical practice. She received two Fulbright-Hays grants for study in China, and Egypt and Jordan. She has consulted extensively on primary care and public health issues in South America, Asia, India and the Middle East.
Ridenour is the author of numerous journal articles and contributions to books, focusing her career on health policy and improving primary health care for underserved populations.
Nies came to Stony Brook as dean and professor in 2004 and also holds a joint appointment as professor in the School of Medicine, Department of Preventive Medicine and Division of Community and Behavioral Health. She previously held several administrative posts at Wayne State (Mich.) University including associate dean for research, director of the Center for Health Research, assistant dean for family, community and mental health and professor. Prior to joining Wayne State University, Nies was a faculty member at the University of Tennessee at Memphis College of Nursing and the Vanderbilt University School of Nursing.
Nies received the distinguished alumnus award from Loyola School of Nursing in 2002 and the distinguished alumnus award for achievement from the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Nursing in 2003.
She has published extensively in the area of her research focus, including physical activity for minority and non-minority women, health promotion for vulnerable populations and community interventions. Her national leadership roles include that of study section member for the National Institutes of Health. In addition, she is co-editor of the textbook “Community Health
Nursing: Promoting the Health of Populations” that received the American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year Award in 1994.
Butterfield’s previous positions include serving as director of the occupational and environmental health nursing program at the University of Washington and director of the Office of Research and Scholarship at the Montana State University College of Nursing.
Butterfield is nationally recognized for her work addressing environmental health, rural health systems and occupational health services in small companies and rural communities. She directs a four-year clinical trial testing the therapeutic effect of public health nursing visits on the environmental health status of rural low-income children. Her current projects are funded by the National Institutes of Health and the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency, and findings from her research have been covered by CNN and USA Today.
She is the author of “Thinking Upstream” and “Upstream Reflections on Environmental Health,” widely cited papers from Advances in Nursing Science. Her work has also been published in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine and Neurology. This past May, Butterfield was invited to give the commencement address for the Yale School of Nursing.
Dorothy Detlor, dean of nursing, retired from her position on Sept. 1, 2006 and Anne Hirsch, senior associate dean for academic affairs in the college, has since served as interim dean.
About the College of Nursing
Established in 1968, Washington State University Intercollegiate College of Nursing is the nation’s first, oldest and most comprehensive nursing education consortium. The College of Nursing offers baccalaureate, graduate and professional development course work to nursing students enrolled in Spokane through its four consortium partners, Eastern Washington University, Gonzaga University, Washington State University and Whitworth College. The same programs are also offered in several communities across the state including Yakima, Vancouver, Tri-Cities and Walla Walla using the Washington Higher Education Telecommunications System’s interactive video as well as by videoconferencing, video streaming and Web-based instruction.
As the largest college of nursing in the Pacific Northwest, the WSU Intercollegiate College of Nursing is currently educating more than 900 upper-division undergraduate and graduate students, and each year graduates more entry-level nurses than any other educational institution in the state. In addition, its faculty researchers are contributing significantly to the knowledge base of the profession and of health care.
