The third time was the charm for UTHealth Houston’s efforts to offer a doctoral nursing program. Two earlier proposals championed by long-time dean Patricia L. Starck, PhD, RN, FAAN, had been unsuccessful, but in 1995 what was then the UTHealth Houston School of Nursing was granted approval by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to offer a Doctor of Nursing Science (DSN) degree. The first class of eight students matriculated in August 1996.

“For three decades, Cizik School of Nursing at UTHealth Houston has been a catalyst for discovery, cultivating generations of nurse scientists, scholars, and leaders whose work has improved lives and strengthened communities,” said Meagan Whisenant, PhD, APRN, FAAN, director of the PhD program. “As we look to the future, the program’s greatest promise lies in inspiring the next generation of scientists and innovators, individuals who will advance the science of nursing and lead transformative solutions that shape the future of healthcare.”

Faculty and a few of the 154 students who have earned nursing science doctorates over the past 30 years recently shared their memories.

Janet Meininger, PhD, MSN, FAAN
Professor Emerita
Cizik School of Nursing

When Dr. Starck was appointed Dean in 1984, one of her major goals for the school was to offer a doctoral program in nursing. To reach this goal, she recruited senior faculty with programs of research, provided research mentoring programs for faculty, and developed resources to support faculty research and doctoral education. When I joined the faculty in 1986, I brought a program of research and experience in doctoral nursing education from the University of Pennsylvania. To enrich the research environment at the school of nursing, I collaborated with Dr. Starck in developing a proposal to the president of the UTHealth Houston, Dr. Roger Bulger, to establish the Center for Nursing Research. He awarded the school $100,000 that went into an endowment for the Dean’s Research Award, which to this day continues to fund grants for early career researchers to conduct pilot studies.

There were three attempts to get approval for a doctoral program. I was not directly involved in the first two proposals. The second time the proposal was turned down, UTHealth San Antonio School of Nursing had submitted a proposal in the same round. As we understood it, the rationale behind that decision was that there was a need to increase access to graduate education in the southern parts of Texas, and it was decided that San Antonio would be best able to serve those needs.

Then in the early ’90s, we went to bat again. Dr. Starck asked me to lead the faculty in developing the curriculum for the program and writing the proposal for the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. Simultaneously, I developed a proposal to obtain federal funding to start the program through the U.S. Bureau of Health Professions, Division of Nursing.

Dr. Starck made excellent presentations at the hearings with the coordinating board, and Dr. Bill Cunningham, Chancellor of the University of Texas System, personally advocated for approval of the program. Coincidentally, while the second hearing of the coordinating board was going on, I received notice that the grant proposal we had submitted to the Bureau of Health Professions was being funded. On the very day that we sought final approval to offer the program, we also received notice of a grant award for three years of federal funding to implement it. The program was approved by the coordinating board in September 1995, and the first class of DSN students matriculated in August 1996.

Dr. Mara Baun is the faculty member who spearheaded the transition of the degree title from DSN to Doctor of Philosophy in Nursing. We were approved to change the title of our research doctoral degree program to the PhD in September 2007 for past, present, and future graduates.

Establishing the program marked the beginning of high-level academic research and doctoral education in nursing at UTHealth Houston. The core objective of the program was to prepare nurse scientists to conduct research to address clinical and population-based health challenges. Strong faculty mentorship and interprofessional and interdisciplinary collaboration were hallmarks of the program. Each student was matched with a nursing faculty advisor and two additional faculty from outside of the school of nursing to comprise an interdisciplinary mentorship committee. This approach provided collaborative experiences for the students and advice from multiple perspectives, while leveraging the strengths of all the component schools of UTHealth Houston as well as other academic and healthcare institutions in the Texas Medical Center.

Wendy Duggleby, PhD, RN
Professor Emerita
University of Alberta School of Nursing
(Member of the first PhD cohort that graduated in 1999)

I am originally from Canada. I was recruited to Nacogdoches as a hospice nurse, and my husband was recruited as a physical therapist. I was teaching at Stephen F. Austin University, and my director at the time had worked at UTHealth Houston and encouraged a couple of us to apply.

Dr. Starck advocated and negotiated for the program. To start, it was a DSN. Its focus was on patient reported outcomes, which I loved. It was a roadmap for nurse practitioners to get their doctorate as well. I wasn’t a nurse practitioner, but I was a clinical nurse specialist.

Because we had a nice small class, and being the first class, I really felt like it was a journey together. The faculty didn’t make me feel like a student. They built on the expertise we brought.

They brought in other scholars once a month. Dr. Susan McMillan from the University of Florida came in, and I continued to work with Susan afterwards. She continued to mentor me in my career.

Dr. Sharon Ostwald was my doctoral supervisor. She was the director of the Center on Aging at that time. It was a marvelous fit for me. My dissertation was on the pain experience of elderly hospice patients.

I ended up teaching full-time at Stephen F. Austin for another year after graduation, and then I moved to the University of Texas at Arlington. I was there three years. Then our parents were elderly and needing care, and we came back to Canada. I taught at the University of Saskatoon at the undergraduate and graduate level, and we started a PhD program there. I was there for 10 years, then came to the University of Alberta to be an endowed chair in aging and quality of life.

I developed the Living with Hope intervention and through time conducted many different studies – one with palliative care patients, one for caregivers. That spawned one for people living with dementia and one for people living with cancer and their caregivers. At the same time, I worked with a colleague and developed the Nav-CARE program [Navigation: Connecting, Advocating, Resourcing, Engaging] to train volunteers imbedded in community organizations to support patients. Now it is in six different European countries and New Zealand.

What I learned in the DSN program, I continue to use. It has been foundational throughout my whole career.

Lorraine Frazier, PhD, RN, FAHA, FAAN
Dean, Columbia University School of Nursing
Former dean of Cizik School of Nursing
(Member of second PhD cohort, graduated in 2000)

I worked for Janet Meninger as a  research assistant. I became a student in the program the second year it opened. I hadn’t quite finished the master’s program yet. I knew that if I didn’t get into the PhD program, I would never come back. They made an exception for me to start the PhD program during the last semester of my master’s program, and I loved every minute of it.

I loved the faculty, and I loved learning, so it was a perfect fit for me. Janet was supportive of me as a student and employee. Some things are just meant to be.

It was small class of five or six. I was able to get a really good education the second year the program opened, which I think is quite unique. We had to be clinically focused and research focused at the same time.

In my university here, we accept only six PhD students a year, and they receive a lot of attention. The problem is not attracting the students, the problem is selecting the ones that fit the program. Getting the ones who want to work in the same areas that their mentors work in is the secret.

I finished in three years. It was a lot of work, and I did original research. All classes were in person. It was like a job, in the morning until the afternoon. I helped Dr. Meininger with her research and got to be part of that research team. It was how research education is supposed to happen, working with someone who is funded.

Dr. Pat Liehr was my PhD advisor who mentored me as we studied stress and cardiovascular health in patients with heart disease. Pat was an amazing mentor. In my next step to understand the impact of stress on the cardiovascular system, I wanted to look at the genetic component. We found out that it’s not all genetics, it’s a lot more than that. 

Eric Boerwinkle [dean of the UTHealth School of Public Health] also mentored me for years. He talked me into getting another master’s from McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston, which I did.

Having an atmosphere where people don’t turn you down or say, “No, you can’t do that,” is what I found is very important for students, research, and the future, and that’s what I found at UTHealth Houston.

Learn more about former Cizik School of Nursing Dean Lorraine Frazier.

Members of the first Accelerated PhD cohort, Class of 2013

Angela Nash, PhD, APRN, CPNP-PC, PMHS, CARN-AP, FIAAN
Retired Associate Professor, Cizik School of Nursing
(George Foundation Scholar) 

Faith Strunk, PhD, APRN, FNP-BC
Retired Assistant Professor, Cizik School of Nursing
(MD Anderson Cancer Center Scholar)

Anitra Frederick, PhD, RN, CNE
Assistant Dean of Undergraduate Studies, Cizik School of Nursing
(Texas Children’s Hospital Scholar)

Ten PhD students started the Patricia L. Starck Accelerated PhD Scholars Program in 2010. Each student was sponsored by a gift from a foundation or healthcare organization and committed to teaching at Cizik School of Nursing for at least three years after graduation. Among that group were Nash and Strunk, who retired in 2026, and Anitra Frederick, who holds a leadership role at the school.

Nash: I had been a nurse since 1980 and a nurse practitioner since 1997. I moved to Houston in 2005 to take a faculty position with Baylor College of Medicine.

One of my goals was to get a PhD, but it was going to be after my kids were all married. That was the plan. This just accelerated that process.

Strunk: I graduated with my Bachelor of Science in nursing (BSN) in ’79. My master’s was in ’93, because the Army put me through. I had taught in the Army, but I had only taught one course in a university setting. I’d been working at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center for a good while in breast medical oncology.

I knew I was going to get a doctorate, because I wanted to teach, to help create more family nurse practitioners. I love what I do, and wouldn’t have gotten to do it if I had not been in this program.

Frederick: I became a nurse in 2005. Then I got my master’s from UTHealth Houston. I finished that in 2010, and I rolled right into this PhD program because I really had questions about moms and babies, and I enjoyed working with students. I thought that teaching was something that I would like to do. My nursing experience was in neonatal ICUs and transition nurseries.

I knew I wanted to get a doctorate at some point, but I don’t think I would have done it then if it hadn’t been for this program. For me, it was a perfect opportunity to get paid to go to school and only have to focus on that. I probably would have put it off 10 or 20 years otherwise. It came along at the right time for me in my life, and it jumpstarted my career.

Nash: Because it was accelerated, you had to do everything in two years, 10 months. You had to do 65 credit hours. You had to plan your study. You had to get grants for your study. You had to carry it out and write it up and present it. We were allowed to work one day a week. We had to write seven papers on our population that first semester. For my dissertation, I looked at the process of recovery in an alternative peer group. I’m still publishing papers off that data.

Strunk: The whole reason I got my PhD was because I wanted to know why my breast cancer patients still had symptoms 10 years later. I ended up doing a study on symptoms in breast cancer survivors that had been out of treatment for a number of years. If they were taking aromatase inhibitors or tamoxifen, they still had symptoms. That was the one correlation.

Frederick: Mine was the feel-good research. I always had the question, why do we separate the moms and the babies [in the case of Cesarean section deliveries]? We knew skin-to-skin contact for moms and babies is very beneficial for both mom and baby for many reasons. I was looking at how moms experienced putting babies against their skin during the operating room closure procedure.

Nash: The classes were good. Remember, everybody worried and complained about Sandy Hanneman’s class, that measurement class? But I loved it.

Strunk: I loved Sandy’s class, because it was very systematic, and I do systems.

Frederick: She had very high standards, and she wanted you to come up to those standards. She was a great teacher.

The faculty were excellent. Remember our concept course and our framework that we had to create? Dr. Diane Wardell for several years asked me, “Are you going to publish that?” When she passed I said, “OK, I’m going to update this, and I’m going to publish it,” and I did.

Nash: We were very tight. It was really nice to go through it together.

Frederick: We bonded.

Learn more about Nash, Strunk, and other recent retirees.

Essi Havor, PhD, MPH, RN, PHNA-BC
Nurse Scientist, Houston Methodist Willowbrook Hospital
(Class of 2023)

I’m originally from Togo, West Africa. I came to the U.S. actually to go to medical school, but I shifted to nursing. What interested me in nursing is not only do you get to really understand the patient experience on individual level, but also how people experience disease or health outcomes differently. That interest led me to population health and epidemiology. As a public health nurse and a scientist, I practice broadly and do research.

My academic journey has not been linear. I started as a certified nurse assistant, then went on to become a licensed practical nurse. After that, I got my associate degree in nursing, then went back and got a BSN, and later an MSN. I now see these transitions as interconnected experiences.

I decided to pursue a PhD while serving as the chief nurse for the immunization program at the Houston Health Department. In that role, I was being exposed to epidemiology and quickly recognized that I needed stronger data and analytical skills.

I struggled with, “Do I want to do a PhD in nursing, or do I want to do a PhD in public health?” UTHealth Houston gave the platform to kind of do both. I chose nursing, and the Particia L. Starck scholarship covered my tuition almost for three years. I am deeply grateful and honored to have received this scholarship. Its support was meaningful during an important stage of my development as a nurse scientist.

I started taking the electives at the UTHealth Houston School of Public Health. I ended up with over 100 credits. I completed the PhD at Cizik School of Nursing and a master’s at the School of Public Health in five years and graduated in May 2023. I raised a family at the same time and also held a full-time job. I was fortunate to have a strong support system. The flexibility I received from my job and the sense of community provided by my PhD colleagues made it possible to balance all responsibilities. I also had the opportunity to work with Dr. Diane Santa Maria. We worked together on an HIV study to understand the experience of people living with HIV across the globe during the COVID-19 pandemic. My dissertation was on nonalcoholic fatty liver disease in people living with HIV.

After graduation, I applied for the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). EIS is a two-year post-doctoral fellowship in applied epidemiology. I matched with the CDC Division for heart disease and stroke prevention.

During my fellowship, I also served as Commissioned Corps Officer in the United States Public Health Service. In 2024, I was deployed to the Republic of the Congo to support our international partners with mpox outbreak and response. Overall, my training at CDC strengthened skills ranging from diplomacy to media and risk communication and expanded my research interests. It also sparked my interest in the intersection of environmental exposures and cardiovascular health. I used syndromic surveillance data to examine the impact of smoke from the 2023 Canadian wildfires on emergency department utilization among exposed populations in the U.S. Climate and environmental health are increasingly relevant to nursing practice because nurses see its effects firsthand and should be prepared to recognize the risk and to educate, and advocate for vulnerable populations.

Now I serve as a nurse scientist within a large health system, a role that is still emerging within hospital settings. In this role, I work with nurses and clinical teams to develop and implement quality improvement, evidence-based practice, and research initiatives aimed at improving patient care and outcomes.

The PhD program taught me to think independently, to generate evidence, and translate that into better care and services. That’s what a PhD program is supposed to do. I have the foundation to understand what happens at the bedside, I can step back and ask what is happening across populations, who is most affected, why and how to address the gaps using evidence. I don’t have to choose between being a nurse, an epidemiologist, or a scientist. My strength is at the intersection of those disciplines.

Learn more about the PhD program at Cizik School of Nursing.

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