Vigilando

News from the Johns Hopkins Nurses’ Alumni Association

President’s Message

Now that my term of office has rounded the bend and is heading for home (I’ll be stepping down in October), I am reflecting on the time I have spent on the Board of the Alumni Association and what has been accomplished. After the death of the association’s executive director Dorothea Robertson in January 1990, I worked with several of my fellow alums to rewrite the by-laws in order to make a tighter, more streamlined organization.

In the 1990s, we were an organization that constantly worried about money and rarely moved ahead with projects because of fear about running out of money. That is not to say that we aren’t concerned about money today, but our investments have done well and we see ourselves as responsible for preserving our history. Therefore, we are committing some of our resources to projects that further that goal.

As treasurer in 1999, I was approached by researchers who were working on the book about the history of the school. They couldn’t do the necessary research because the Archives had not been preserved and catalogued and therefore were unusable. The researchers were concerned about how to pay for the necessary archiving. My response was, “Let the Board worry about how to pay for it; you concentrate on getting what you need.”

As they moved ahead with the book, it became obvious that we needed professional help to ensure its publication and that we needed to include the entire history of nursing education at Hopkins. Therefore, we took the giant step of hiring Mame Warren to pull together all the parts of the history and to edit our book. We continue to seek donations to help support this work and are proud to say that the book is due for publication in 2006.

We have begun several collaborative efforts with the School of Nursing, one of which is this great magazine. We have been putting on “Dinner with the Dean” the week before graduation for both the May and July classes so that new graduates can get to know us and feel connected to the Alumni Association.
We have worked in many ways to bring the association to the students and portray it as representative of its members, not merely a vehicle for recruitment of funds. It is important for us to stay connected so we can help each other as we pursue our professional goals.

I believe that the time has come for the Alumni Association to be placed under the leadership of the younger generation, those who graduated from the university school, who are connected to the present school and to the profession. I will continue to support the association in every way possible, even as I stand back to cheer on this next generation of leaders.

Thank you for the opportunity to serve and lead you. Thank you for the trust that you had that I would work toward the best for our association. Thank you for this opportunity to retire yet again and continue with my avocation.