Alum Lucy Marion to receive posthumous award at REUNION
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Lucy Marion, PhD ’90, RN, FAAN, FAANP, a pioneer in the Doctor of Nursing Practice movement, will receive a posthumous award in honor of her distinguished career in nursing education and practice from the UIC College of Nursing at the all-alumni REUNION on Sept. 23.
Marion, who had cancer, died on April 13 at the age of 76.
Marion was a professor and department head at UIC Nursing before serving as dean at Augusta University College of Nursing in Georgia for 15 years, until her retirement in 2020.
Seeing a “rapidly changing health care environment” that called for more complex care, Marion started advocating for the DNP to replace a master’s degree as the terminal degree for advanced practice nurses in the early 2000s, according to JoEllen Wilbur, PhD ’84, MS ’75, FAAN, Rush University College of Nursing professor, who nominated Marion for the award.
Then, there were only a few DNP programs in existence. Now, there are more than 400 DNP programs with multiple specialties.
“At the time, the DNP was a disruptive innovation and only time would tell if it was truly the future or just a fringe movement,” wrote Lorna Finnegan, PhD ’03, MS ’88, BSN ’80, RN, FNP, FAAN, dean of the Marcella Niehoff School of Nursing at Loyola University Chicago, in a nominating letter. “Although it has taken far too long, 23 years later, we are all aware that the DNP was, and is, the future.”
Finnegan added: “Dr. Marion has indeed left a legacy – a permanent imprint on the nursing profession and beyond.”
Chicago years
Marion began her more than 50-year career as a nurse and nurse educator at the University of South Carolina, where she earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees, before coming to UIC Nursing for her PhD.
She was recruited as part of a training grant in community health nursing research with a focus on behavioral change theory, Wilbur recalls. Marion received NIH funding for an intervention to reduce sexually transmitted disease risks among African American women living on Chicago’s West Side, one of the first at UIC Nursing to focus on social determinants of health.
From 1995 to 2004, Marion served as head of UIC Nursing’s department of Public Health, Mental Health, and Administrative Nursing (now Population Health Nursing Science).
When Marion first assumed the position, Wilbur recalled, there was only one NIH-funded Research Project Grant (R01) in the department.
In short order, under her leadership, there were five, all focused on underserved populations.
Wilbur also noted that at UIC Nursing, Marion and her team were instrumental in establishing The Center for Integrated Health Care (IHC), a partnership between the College of Nursing and Thresholds, a community-based psychiatric rehabilitation facility. IHC received one of 10 Affordable Care Act awards and the prestigious Edge Runner designation by the American Academy of Nursing.
A ‘visionary leader’
As dean of the Augusta University College of Nursing, Marion oversaw its merger with the Medical College of Georgia.
Under her leadership, the college was the first in the state of Georgia to offer a DNP program. She also leveraged her post as president of the National Organization of Nurse Practitioner Faculties [NONPF] to argue for the doctoral degree nationally.
In 2008, Marion received the NONPF Lifetime Achievement Award for her work to move the DNP forward and her lifelong commitment to advancing nurse practitioner education.
A “crown jewel,” Wilbur wrote, of Marion’s accomplishments at Augusta was the opening of the college’s nurse-managed health center in the university’s Health Sciences building in 2019, which offers same day and walk-in appointments for primary care services.
“Dr. Marion’s long career embodies a truly visionary leader,” Wilbur wrote. “She has made a mark on nursing education and practice at the highest levels in the U.S.”