Dr. Marilyn Hanson Stember ‘67 will address graduating seniors at Augustana's 2019 commencement exercises on Saturday, May 25, at 2 p.m. at the Sioux Falls Arena.
Dr. Stember will deliver her keynote titled, “The Road to Healthy: Centered for the Journey.”
Dr. Stember will deliver her address before 297 graduates who will participate in the undergraduate commencement ceremony (an additional 43 students will graduate in absentia). Three Augie Access students will be recognized at Commencement 2019 and earn certificates of completion for their participation.
About Dr. Marilyn Hanson Stember
After earning her Bachelor of Science in nursing from Augustana in 1967, Dr. Stember went on to earn a Master’s in nursing from the University of Washington in Seattle. Due to a lack of Ph.D. programs in nursing in the 1970s, she was selected for a new, federally funded nurse scientist program that enabled nurses to pursue doctoral degrees in related fields with the goal of preparing them for academic instructional positions. The closest disciplines to her public health nursing clinical specialty were the social sciences, and Stember completed both her Masters of Arts and Ph.D. degrees in sociology from the University of Colorado in Boulder. Stember subsequently completed a two-year post-doctorate in psychology at the University of Denver.
Dr. Stember is Professor Emeritus at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Center, where she served 40 years as professor, department chair, associate dean for research, and executive associate dean. During her tenure, she secured substantial federal and private grant funding for innovative educational and research projects which led to numerous publications and presentations to national and international audiences. She also secured university-wide approval for a Center for Nursing Research and served as its founding Director for more than a decade. Stember developed the first Ph.D. program in nursing west of the Mississippi and built one of the top nursing research programs in the country.
Dr. Stember has served Augustana as a member of the Board of Regents from 1992-2004 and became the first woman to serve as Chair of the board in 2002. She was awarded the Alumni Achievement Award in 2007 and was an Honor Guard Inductee in 2017.