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When Carol Epstein was named one of this year's recipients of the Carl F. Wittke Awards for Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching, it was more than a personal honor -- it was historic.
"I was thrilled just to be nominated, because there were so many, many wonderful nominees," says the assistant professor at the Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing. But she was especially proud to learn she is the first nursing professor to win the Wittke Award in its 36-year history.
Epstein received the award May 21 during the undergraduate diploma ceremony. A student committee selected this year's Wittke recipients from among 25 faculty members nominated by undergraduate students.
She teaches the year-long "Nursing Care of the Adult and Older Adult," a nine-hour, sophomore-level course. "I love interacting with sophomores because they've been introduced to the clinical setting as freshmen and have developed enough confidence to really begin to develop their identity as a nurse," says Epstein. "So I'm getting them at a time where I feel I can shape them and influence them. I have them right at this perfect moment."
Epstein's love of teaching is matched by her love of learning.
A Brooklyn native, she attended high school in Northern New Jersey, then went right into New York City's Mt. Sinai Hospital School of Nursing, where she received her nursing diploma in 1969.
Afterward, she worked as a nurse for a year, then spent two years at Fairfield University in Connecticut working toward a bachelor's degree in English. Then it was back to nursing full-time for a year before heading to Cornell University to complete the BA in English literature.
"That was something I really wanted to do for myself," says Epstein of her first college degree. "We were a really working-class family. No one in my family had ever attended college before."
Looking back on her pattern of alternating nursing with education, she observes, "I think that's really helped me to maintain my enthusiasm for nursing, to do nursing then go back and become a student again."
After Cornell, Epstein came to Cleveland, where she served two years at the Visiting Nurse Association. Then it was back to school, this time to Ursuline College for a Bachelor of Science in Nursing, which she earned in 1983. While at Ursuline, she also served as a staff nurse at Mt. Sinai Medical Center, where she stayed until 1987.
In 1988, she came to the Bolton School. Since then she has balanced pursuit of a master's degree in critical care nursing (1990) and a Ph.D. in nursing (1998) with two research assistantships and with clinical positions at St. Vincent Charity Hospital and MetroHealth Medical Center. She continues to serve as a part-time clinical nurse in MetroHealth's surgical intensive care unit.
She joined the Bolton School faculty as an instructor in 1997, and was promoted to assistant professor that same year.
Certified as a critical care nurse since 1985, Epstein was named a 1999 American Association of Critical Care Nurses Scholar. The honor carried a $3,000 American Nurses Foundation Grant, which is helping fund Epstein's two-year study of the responses of elderly critically ill patients to weaning from mechanical ventilation. The study is also funded by the Society of Critical Care Medicine.
In collaboration with John Clochesy, the Independence Foundation Professor of Nursing Education, she is also conducting a study on biologic rhythms in the critically ill. That study is funded with a $25,000 CWRU President's Research Initiative Award.
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