Lynda Slimmer: Investing in nurse educators
Lynda Slimmer, PhD, MS ’72, BSN ’69, created the John and Lynda Slimmer Endowment for Teaching Excellence to help faculty develop teaching skills
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It was a “help wanted” ad in the Chicago Tribune that brought Lynda Slimmer, PhD, MS ’72, BSN ’69, back to UIC after a near 30-year absence.
After getting both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the UIC College of Nursing, Slimmer embarked on a three decade-long career as a nurse educator at Elmhurst College. She retired and was looking for a part-time gig when she saw the job at UIC’s Clinical Research Center from the want ads and got it.
From there, she returned to the College of Nursing for a second run, this time to develop a teaching-mentoring program and as associate head of Biobehavioral Health Science.
Her passion for teaching led her to create the John and Lynda Slimmer Endowment for Teaching Excellence, a fund specifically geared toward helping faculty develop teaching skills.
UIC has book-ended your career. What brought you back?
I spent 30 years as an educator at a private college, Elmhurst College. I had no intention of ever coming back to the College of Nursing here. I retired from Elmhurst in 2002, and took a part time job in the College of Medicine, working in their Clinical Research Center. I worked with a lot of the researchers in nursing and I had an opportunity to come [to the College of Nursing] in ‘06.
The reason they asked me to come here was to help develop a teaching-mentoring program. And so I spent the next seven years here doing that.
Why a teaching endowment?
As an undergraduate and a graduate student here, I had phenomenal faculty. They mentored me.
New faculty today are wonderful nurse researchers — wonderful nurse practitioners — but they really don’t have a lot of experience in teaching. When I came here, I was very fortunate to have a wonderful group of young faculty to work with. They want to teach and they’re highly motivated.
I wanted to leave something to continue helping young faculty, and older faculty too, because teaching is not a static skill.
What do you hope the impact of your gift will be?
There are other teaching awards that the university and the college gives, but this is to really sponsor faculty going to national conferences and having workshops here, primarily for development of their teaching expertise or their teaching excellence.
We can’t always get grants to do that. We have an endowment for research. I thought, “Let’s have an endowment for teaching.”
Why did you choose to include your husband’s name in the award?
I think I am a really good mental health nurse, but I think I’m a better nurse educator. Part of that has to do with the role models I had, including my husband. He was my anatomy and physiology teacher. He really embodied what it was to be a good teacher. I saw how much joy he got out of teaching.
My husband passed away. The endowment is, in a way, in honor of him and his teaching, and the fact that he’s a U of I alum. I think he would think it was kind of cool — giving back to this institution.