Hanneman retires after 56 years of nursing practice, research, and education

Colleagues, students, and alumni celebrated the transition of Sandra K. Hanneman, PhD, RN, FAAN, to emerita status with a party April 15 at Cizik School of Nursing at UTHealth Houston. She retires as a tenured professor in the Department of Research, the Jerold B. Katz Distinguished Professor for Nursing Research, and a University of Texas Distinguished Teaching Professor.

Hanneman joined the school in 1996 as a tenured associate professor and associate dean for research. Over the past three decades, she has mentored hundreds of graduate and undergraduate students. Her engaging pathophysiology classes, in which she sometimes assigns students to act out roles on stage as molecules and bodily organs, won her the John P. McGovern Undergraduate Teacher of the Year Award six times.

“Dr. Hanneman’s legacy lives in the thousands of students she has taught and in her research discoveries,” said Dean Diane Santa Maria, DrPH, MSN, RN, ACRN, PHNA-BC, FSAHM, FAAN. “She has never shied away from asking hard questions, and her contributions to our profession are immeasurable.”

The New England native moved with her family at a young age to Florida, where the climate was gentler on her little sister’s asthma. Her mother, a former Army nurse, returned to her chosen field after the move and inspired Hanneman’s career choice.

“I never considered a career other than nursing,” Hanneman said in a 2024 oral history interview for the Texas Medical Center Library.

Hanneman earned her Bachelor of Science in Nursing from the University of Florida in Gainesville while working with other students to establish a clinic in an underserved neighborhood, a clinic that is still operational today. She took her first job out of nursing school in a brand new pediatric intensive care unit at the university’s teaching hospital and has focused on critical care ever since.

Her sense of adventure took her to New York, where she worked at Mount Sinai Hospital, then to San Francisco. There, she cared for acute respiratory distress syndrome patients in a cardiopulmonary ICU using massive machines that were precursors to today’s extracorporeal membrane oxygenation technology.

Hanneman earned her Master of Science in Nursing from the University of California – San Francisco. For her thesis, she tested four methods of suctioning the lungs of patients on mechanical ventilation while providing supplemental oxygen. She found that two methods harmed patients and identified the preferred approach that has become the standard of care.

Shortly after graduation, her husband died suddenly and unexpectedly, leaving Hanneman living in Singapore as the single mother of an infant. She took the characteristically analytical step of creating a matrix and visiting several cities to determine which struck the right balance between a family friendly environment and career opportunity. Houston was the natural choice. Hanneman knew that in the Bayou City she could earn a PhD from Texas Woman’s University (TWU), which she did while working in a series of leadership positions at what was then Hermann Hospital. She began teaching PhD-level nursing courses at TWU as soon as she finished her terminal degree.

Faculty from what was then the UTHealth Houston School of Nursing recruited Hanneman to lead the research department while she was waiting for word on a National Institutes of Health grant proposal for a project using adult pigs to study circadian rhythms in critically ill patients. After Tropical Storm Allison washed away the lab she was using at the Texas Heart Institute, Hanneman raised funds to build a new lab at UTHealth Houston. Her project ultimately ended because of high costs, but nurse anesthesia students and critical care faculty used the space for simulation education and research.

During her 56-year career, Hanneman published dozens of articles and book chapters and received many honors, including the University of Texas Regent’s Outstanding Teaching Award as well as induction as a fellow of the American Academy of Nurses and into the UT System Kenneth I. Shine Academy of Health Science Education.

Although Hanneman is retiring from day-to-day teaching and research, she plans to apply for professor emerita status so she can remain active with continuing publications and providing guidance to her current PhD students, two of whom are researching circadian rhythms in ICU patients.

“I feel good about my contributions, and I hope every registered nurse can say that when she or he is at the end of their career,” she said in the oral history interview. “This has been a wonderful career. I’m not done yet.”

Photos from Dr. Hanneman’s retirement party are available on Flickr.