Interview with Eugenia Taylor

Eugenia Taylor was born January 22, 1919, in Spokane, WA, and grew up in rural Montana. She earned her nursing diploma at Sacred Heart School of Nursing in Havre, MT. She worked as a public health nurse in Roosevelt County, MT, from 1943-45. In 1949, she earned her BS in Nursing Education and Public Health Nursing from the University of Minnesota. From 1949-1986, she was a faculty member in the UMN School of Nursing. While she was on faculty she developed the first interdisciplinary gerontology course for health professional students. She was also in charge of the Practical Nursing program for it entire existence (1947-1967). Taylor has been recognized for her work in early public health nursing in rural Montana and for her pioneering work in Gerontology Nursing. She has represented and promoted professional nursing in interdisciplinary work on legislation toward Universal Health Care.Eugenia Taylor begins by discussing her background, including growing up in Montana, her education, her early nursing career, and why she became a nurse. She discusses her experiences as a diploma student, as a baccalaureate student at the UMN, getting her MA in education, and as faculty member at the UMN. She talks about the UMN School of Nursing faculty and deans, including Katherine J. Densford, Edna Fritz, and Isabel Harris. She discusses the practical nursing program and its position within the School of Nursing; the rural nursing program; licensed practical nurses (LPNs) versus registered nurses (RNs); nursing education; the Child Bearing-Child Rearing program; Building F; the Shyamala Rajender decree, sex discrimination, and women at the UMN; the Disaster Nursing Program in the 1950s/1960s; the School of Nursing and the reorganization of the health sciences in the late 1960s; the nurse midwifery program; the nursing Ph.D. program; the Area Health Education Commission; and the School of Nursing’s regional work. She describes changes in nursing education curriculum in the 1960s; the creation of a School of Nursing dean and the appointment of Isabel Harris as the School’s first dean; nursing education in the Twin Cities; nursing licensing; nursing aids; physicians assistants; nurse practitioners; relations in the School of Nursing between faculty with Ph.D.s and those without; and nursing research laboratories