Yale Bulletin and Calendar

November 22, 2002|Volume 31, Number 12|Two-Week Issue

Catherine Lynch Gilliss

Gilliss reappointed as dean of the School of Nursing

Catherine Lynch Gilliss, dean of the Yale School of Nursing (YSN), has been reappointed to the post for a second five-year term, President Richard C. Levin has announced.

Her new term will begin on July 1, 2003.

In a letter to the YSN community, Levin wrote, "Under Dean Gilliss' leadership, the school has continued to strengthen its programs of research and doctoral education, maintained its excellent teaching programs across a range of nursing specialties, and undertaken an exciting new collaboration with Howard University. Dean Gilliss' involvement in the national nursing community has raised the visibility and reputation of the school, which has helped our efforts to recruit outstanding faculty and students."

Levin added: "In my conversations with nearly 40 members of the faculty, I was deeply impressed with the shared energy and passion for the School of Nursing and its mission. The school is fortunate that its faculty, staff, students and alumni are so strongly committed to its success in the years to come."

Gilliss has earned renown as a leader in graduate education in primary health care. Since 1979, she has directed graduate nurse practitioner programs. From 1984 to 1998 she was professor and chair of the Department of Family Health Care Nursing at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF). Under her leadership, the Primary Care Program at UCSF received a 1995 mary Care Achievement Award for Excellence in Education.

Appointed YSN dean in 1998, Gilliss brought to Yale a conviction that universities must do more to attract scholars from minority populations to pursue careers in nursing. She was instrumental in the development of partnership models of nursing education that have brought minority scholars to Yale to pursue graduate education and careers in nursing research.

She and Dean Dorothy Powell of Howard University co-created the Yale Howard Scholars Program, an eight-week summer internship in which Howard University seniors form a close working relationship with a mentor at Yale and pursue their interests through hands-on research, seminars, and shadowing of advanced practice nurses. The program model has since been adopted at university settings throughout the country as an effective means to diversify the profession and prepare scientists to eliminate disparities in health. In 2002, Gilliss spearheaded the effort to secure additional funding from the National Institutes of Health/National Institute of Nursing Research in order to build on the existing Yale-Howard relationship to create the Yale Partnership Center to Eliminate Health Disparities. The new initiative work to recruit and develop nurse scientists who will conduct culturally relevant and competent research to eliminate health disparities. The center, which has been funded for five years, will be directed by Gilliss.

In her own research, Gilliss has helped develop understanding of family and chronic illness. She had published articles and book chapters in the areas of chronic illness, family health nursing and advanced practice nursing. She is co-editor of two books: "The Nursing of Families" (with S. Feetham, S. Meister and J. Bell, 1992) and "Toward a Science of Family Nursing" (with B. Highley, B. Roberts and I. Martinson, 1989).

Her many honors include election to fellowship of the American Academy of Nursing in 1990; she is now on the academy's board of directors. She has served as president of the National Organization of Nurse Practitioner Faculties and was awarded the "Outstanding Nurse Practitioner Educator Award" by that group. Gilliss was a Robert Wood Johnson Fellow in primary care and completed a USPHS Primary Care Policy Fellowship in 1993. She served as president of the interdisciplinary Primary Care Fellowship Society 1996-1997.

She holds a B.S.N. from Duke University (1971), an M.S.N. from Catholic University of America (1974) and a D.N.Sc. from the University of California at San Francisco (1983). She completed postdoctoral studies in family health at UCSF.

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