Sweet MUMories Oral History Project - Floye Jean Dockery

Title

Sweet MUMories Oral History Project - Floye Jean Dockery

Description

Date

September 2, 2016

Duration

48:32 minutes

Transcription

Sweet MUMories Oral History Project
Transcript: Floye Dockery, September 2, 2016
Donation Record # Dockery.F.9022016.1
Transcribed by Erika Nisbet 08/19/2017. Approved for deposit by Marsha Robinson on 8/10/2018.
Copyright Miami University. All rights reserved.

0.08 MRR My name is Marsha Robinson and we are recording an oral history with Professor Floye Jean Dockery, who, as part of the Sweet MUMories Oral History Project to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Miami University Middletown, Ohio, campus. This interview is taking place on September 2, 2016, at Johnston Hall. Professor Dockery, do I have your permission to begin this interview?
0.36 FD Yes, you do.
0.37 MRR Well, thank you. So could you please tell us about your connection to Miami University and when you first came here?
0.47 FD I was teaching at Mercy School of Nursing when Miami at Hamilton initiated their nursing program. And Ruth Ann Busald, who was there at the time, recruited me. I, at Mercy Hospital, Sister Miriam McCreana, and I don’t know if you can use her name or not, was the director of the School of Nursing. She had gently prepared me for transferring into a nursing program that was directly under the auspices of a college or university. She did this by sending me off to various places where there were workshops being offered, particularly workshops by the National League of Nursing and the like so that I could be well informed. Her thesis was all nursing programs should be in college and university settings and thus they were going to phase out Mercy School of Nursing. So I had that kind of background even though I had not really considered applying, leaving, you know, of coming here. I started in the nursing program in January of its first year and that is because that is the semester, they were on trimesters at that time, and that was the trimester that the medical surgical nursing course was going to be offered for the first time. At Mercy, Sister McCrema had me to design a course that would integrate adult medical surgical nursing with pediatric nursing. I did that, even though there were some who thought this was impossible or, if you did it, students certainly would not do well on their state board examinations since the examinations had a portion of the exam that was all medical surgical and a portion that was all pediatrics and thus how could they all really pass both of those unless they had specific courses for those. I did it. I did design that study and Ruth Ann was aware of this. As we came, as she was trying to work out how to really design the courses for the campus, which was on trimesters, the decision was you could not devote a full trimester, a full trimester just to a specific med-surg course and a specific adult nursing. And so they needed to be integrate here. I came here with that in mind. Sister McCrema pushed me to leave Mercy which was in its last year and was only going to remain open until they graduated that last class. I started in January and I had to develop the course pretty much while I was teaching it. However, because I had already had some of this, it made it easier for me to do. The students who were admitted to this course through that first year, I believe there were sixteen, it was a rather small class, however, they weren’t, they admitted students, almost any student who applied. And this didn’t always occur because after that, that was specific criteria and a lot of students in the later years could not get in because of the grade points averages and things of that sort. But they wanted this first class so they did admitted. As a matter of fact I remember one of the students had like a twelve or something, you know…
5.31 MRR GPA.
5.32 FD Cumulative, yeah average, and the like. And so here we were with doing these courses in trimesters over two years. Now the thing that may be made that easier for Ruth Ann, too, was Mercy had always been on an academic year. It was not like some diploma programs, a full year. So that was helpful in trying to get the material designed, the courses designed in order to get them into the framework of six quarters, six trimesters rather, not quarters. It went well. The students were very enthusiastic and even the students who did not have the grades, meet all the material that was later required, were so thrilled I think about starting so they really turned out to be very good students. They worked very hard in the courses. And they did well. At the point of graduation and when they took the boards, the State Board had warned us, “Don’t expect everyone to pass because that is not typical of a new program.” We had a hundred percent passage of that first class and that was a feeling of real achievement. The faculty really was pretty small. We had one faculty member who came from, well no that was at Middletown. We had one faculty member to teach like the course that was called The Nursing Arts: The Fundamentals of Nursing. We had another faculty member who taught just the one trimester of teaching the psychiatric portion and I did the med-surg, the pediatrics. But it was an integrated course, you know but those were my responsibilities there. History trends, I believe Ruth Ann Basall took care of those kinds of courses. And I guess those are the most general terms of nursing courses. It was designed particularly so students would have liberal arts courses. We all felt that was a very important to have that liberal arts basis. The university certainly felt this way, you know, the English and all of those kinds of things. So to us that was of important. We also had of course side space, of course the anatomy and the physiologies and the microbiology and those courses. And the faculty from those courses worked very well us in sharing what was going on. Obviously we weren’t designing their courses. That was not at all a thing that we should have been doing. But they worked carefully with us to let us know what kinds of things and if there was something they might not have been hitting that we thought would be helpful. But this was a real basis. For me, I thought that this was perfect. In fact, in later years I served on the university curriculum committee, all-university curriculum committee. I chaired that committee, which I think was kind of odd, you know, all-university. And at the time when they were debating going to required courses, and this is sometimes talked about now, some people were really upset about it. And I think the people on the committee were surprised how I supported the liberal arts basis. And that, to a great extent was because I graduated from a Jesuit university in San Francisco. You did not come out of that university without many of the required liberal arts, including speech and all of those, not that speech is but I mean that was there, that was definitely required. And I felt that it was really quite of important. It changed me. Philosophy, for example. When I first sat in that course I thought, “Why am I taking a philosophy?” I have discovered, I discovered years later in how helpful that was in how you thought about things and processed materials.So the university might be, is unhappy with some of those things now and I have to say that I was one of the ones who was not in typical liberal arts area strongly supporting it and I still support it. I think it does add value. Well, that’s really getting too far off. But we did feel that that was important. I stayed at Hamilton campus and became the head, you know in charge of the med-surg and all of those areas. Then when the nursing program was being thought of here in Middletown, I was asked to come here. That, that, Middletown’s program started later because the hospital program was still working, running and they didn’t really want to start a program here until that one phased out. They phased out and then the idea of really having a program on the Middletown campus came to be. At that point I was asked to come to the Middletown campus as the Associate Director for the nursing program here in Middletown.
12.07 MRR Do you know what year?
12.12 FD I’m not sure I would get it totally correct, which is awful.
12.21 MRR Sixties, seventies?
12.24 FD Yes, but I’m just not sure.
12.26 MRR The 1970s?
12.27 FD Yeah, it was the 1970s.
12.29 MRR Ok.
12.29 FD But I’m just not sure of the exact date. I’d have to look it up.
12.34 MRR Ok.
12.35 FD I’m getting older. But I was asked to come here. We had a teacher for again the Nursing Arts portion. We had a teacher for the psychiatric nursing portion, maternal child health and then I did the other courses, which was med surg, medical surgical and all of those. We had used, we then started using also Middletown Hospital as one of the sites where students would have their clinical experiences. We had used Children’s Hospital in Cincinnati for our pediatric experiences and we continued some of that. Psychiatric nursing, we had used Fort Hamilton because they had a Psychiatric Unit at that time, at Fort Hamilton Hospital. Let’s see. We did start later to use Children’s in Dayton. And I think those are generally, we probably used some other sites but those were basically I think the primary sites that we used. The students were admitted on both campuses at that time. The curriculum was identical. We didn’t have a different one for each campus. They were identical. Again, we worked wonderfully with the people who were teaching courses that were non-nursing courses. And that correlation, that kind of contact was very, very valuable. One of the things that I thought was really wonderful was our offices were such that we could just talk to so many people of the disciplines and really got to know them and that was good. And I saw that as an advantage as opposed to maybe having a nursing program sort of isolated all to themselves where if you, perhaps would talk to other faculty but not as freely and as, you know as constant, that kind of frequent contact with them. So that was really very, very helpful. We had great support from the director, the campus director, during that time and that was…. no, no, no. We had Dr. Phelps was, oh I should remember all of these people. The first director left here on this campus and I can’t remember his name, but we had, we had great support from the campus director, which was very, very helpful.
16.02 MRR Dr. G or Dr. Thesken?
16.07 FD Dr. Thesken was kind of overseer of both campuses which was wonderful. Dr. Thesken too was very helpful. Governanti, Governanti. Another thing that I should mention that was very helpful. Mercy, we used Mercy, had professors from Miami to teach some of their science courses so when the programs started both on the Hamilton and on the Middletown campus we were able to use some of the same professors and they were familiar with the nursing program. So that was very, very helpful. We, the university, changed from trimesters to semesters, went back to, I don’t remember the exact year. But this meant yet again we had to take a good look at the curriculum, the nursing curriculum and do some redesigning of courses. An interesting undertaking but accomplished very well. And we did not fall down in our, in having, good results when students went to the state board examinations. Along the way there were a few failures, but they were very few and this was wonderful, I think, as the program grew and grew. We always wanted, as a matter of fact, initially there was a design for a baccalaureate program. We had, Ruth Ann too, had been pretty much engrained through Sister McCrema baccalaureate was the way to go and through the trend throughout the nation. The university wasn’t ready at the time that it first started for nursing to have a baccalaureate program. And so it was started as the associate degree program. But as time went on this, and planting the seeds, this thought was considered throughout the university and we were able to get the university to support the development of a baccalaureate program in nursing. However, the university at that point insisted that the students had to take a specific number of courses on the main campus. That we didn’t see as a great problem even though it would mean that the students would either go there or be students there. The baccalaureate students were admitted through the Oxford campus initially. We had some of the students who actually lived on the Oxford campus. Strangely enough, some of them were the one who entered Oxford with a very high college testing and everything. That seemed to surprise a few people. Why would they go into nursing and not medicine with the kinds of scores they were entering in. And you know this wasn’t a lot but it was enough they could pay attention to. But we did, they did live there and others commuted and they, those who weren’t on campus had to commute to the campus to take some courses so it was that kind of a program. Actually, we had an office in Oxford that was in the school of Applied Science. Ruth Ann had her own little office up there where she could go and interact with the students. We were pleased with that and the students who were taking it didn’t seem too upset at the idea of having to go there. Initially some of the ones who were commuting thought it was a little bit out of line, out of… inconvenient but they saw other students in different disciplines who were also commuting students so it worked out fine. Then some years later Oxford decided, when they wanted to start some baccalaureate programs on the branch campuses and some changes came about in the applied science, the School of Applied Science that the nursing program would be one of the programs, one the first programs to go to the branch campuses for the baccalaureate program. I must say, I guess I’ll only speak for myself, (unrecognizable) I was a little disappointed I thought there was some advantage to having the students who wanted to also to be because, and particularly that we would have, that no more of our students would likely be living, the few students that were living really [on campus] contributed a different kind of experience and it worked out well. I thought just to have this mingling of all the students because even though they were on a branch campus they became, I mean the Oxford campus, there was kind of a relationship established between them and the students who were on this campus, who were commuting in and it kind of just added another aspect.
4.40 MRR So they created kind of a sense of family among the majors?
4.42 FD A sense of family, yeah. However, it happened and it worked, you know its working out fine and changes occur and so we go with the changes and develop and grow from that. And this is, I think as I look at the things that occur now this is what is happening and this how education is going. And with the cost and everything perhaps it has a number of advantages for some students who maybe can see or feel that they can better afford not having to go to a large campus setting like Oxford. So, that’s fine as long as the program remains strong and is well developed, that as I see it, is the important aspect. You want to graduate students who are well developed who and not, that they need strong content in their major, strong preparation in their major but they also need to see the world is larger than their major. And even as they interact with people in caring for them they need a sense of other kinds of information to help them to understand people, to understand communities, to understand political changes and to view, have a greater worldview so, and I think that that still can occur. So, word is out flying.
6.27 MRR Good. I liked the phrase that you said that the world is larger than their major. How did you get to the students to go out and see the world and how much of the world did some of these students get to discover?
6.42 FD Probably the greatest experience for some might have been the students who went to Africa. I did not get an opportunity to go but I heard wonderful things the students learned about the world that they never would have experienced any other way and I think that was really great. I think also trying to get them involved in some community activities locally is very important. Getting them to look at how people view, if you’re looking at healthcare, how they come to view their healthcare, how they learn what is important, how they pull together that mental and physical health have interrelationships. You don’t have just one thing over here and one there. You don’t just treat a disease, you treat a human being. And that human being can come from a variety of sources and a variety of backgrounds, a variety in terms of knowledge base. And you need to be able to have some kind of understanding of this and how this relates to perhaps what their healthcare is, not only how it relates to the kinds of disorders they might have but how they, how it relates to how they care for this, how they look at it. We can say this group has more of this than that. For example, Black Americans may have a great likelihood of having hypertension but everyone can have this. How they respond to their treatments or preventive aspects depend not on their racial background as much as it does on other things in their lives, economical, nutritionally which is partly related to economics, perhaps their knowledge base and how much interest they have in learning something different, how they were raised perhaps, their habits, if their habits are poor. It can affect anyone. So these are the things that are really important. This is what I am thinking of when it isn’t just going in and taking care of an illness. You’re taking care of a person who comes from this big world of ours from a variety of backgrounds, from a variety of experiences. And that’s so important. It’s also important to remember that you can’t just assume that a person who has a PhD is going to be what you might consider a good patient or a person who has barely high school is going to be a good patient. You have to look at the total of the person and that takes a lot of understanding. That’s where the social sciences, the kinds of liberal arts, the ways of thinking, even the philosophy, I don’t say everybody should take that but whatever you take it helps you to take a look at this person. It’s like being a faculty member to a certain extent. You really have to take a look at each and every student to some extent to really be able to assist that student to reach the goals. And you have to do this with patient care. That doesn’t mean that you don’t also do the things that you need to do in terms of the healthcare, that you don’t have a strong knowledge basis in that. But a strong knowledge basis in that without the other is not very helpful in the long run.
11.34 MRR You made an example of a faculty and a student but you also gave a lot of credit to Sister McCrema. She helped you to develop as a professional. Once you transferred to Miami did that professional development continue for you and your colleagues and how?
11.52 FD Oh yes, it did. Ruth Ann who was our director really took advantage of opportunities to send faculty, to allow faculty to go to workshops, to attend the National League of Nurses and have great workshops that were educational workshops and the like. She also made it a good opportunity for faculty to participate in community activities that were local community activities and to share information. Some of us spoke in schools and were invited to them and many things. Many of us, you know it was, it was, she wanted us also to be involved in university, the overall university. I’ve really in many was fortunate, I think. I often looked at the number of committees that I served that was university committees and I really hit a lot them at the time. I chaired two of the overall university committees during my time there and I was on, I don’t know, four or five of the university committees. Now part of this I think was the result of Miami had very few black faculty. When I started at Miami, the year I was hired, they had a total of sixteen faculty and staff that were black. Now by staff I mean people who were, well staff and when I started on the Middletown campus there were two of us. Olamae [Pearson] was here and me and that was it. So I think part of that was because many times being a female and black you got appointed to a lot of things. But this was an advantage. It really made me understand the university and I was on the senate, oh I think three different terms. So that really was helpful. Now I don’t just mean to point out me but I guess I know me. But this was the opportunities that Ruth Ann encouraged all faculty and this was very helpful. And you can then transmit things to students, not just information, but help them to also grow and be involved in various things and that kind of activity was very helpful. Dr. Governanti was very good at assisting and finance and allowing faculty to go away when it was appropriate and to attend conventions and things that were very helpful. It was a good place to grow really.
15.32 MRR Good, wow. You talked about developing students. Many people say that the MUM campus provided the only opportunity or access that would be available to some of the students here. Without MUM, college was not possible. Can you think of any examples about students like that and maybe what difference it might have made in their lives?
16.00 FD Yes. I can think of one student that to me at the time really surprised me because in my mind this was not typical of the way this, I wouldn’t have expected it from this particular student. She was a white student from a family that had money, I mean a very good living. And she was one of the nursing students but her family did not want her to be in the nurse, did not feel for some reason that women needed higher education. And so the only way that she was able to come in was she had worked and saved money and entered the nursing program on this campus. That to me really was surprising because I had grown up, this was ages ago but in an academic high school and all setting, that stressed that all white parents expected their children to go on to college and so I was, I couldn’t believe this. This student did come after she had saved money and succeeded. I don’t know if that’s the kind of thing that one would expect. I look at this campus. This was her way, this is how she was able to get her associate degree and she went on later to get a baccalaureate degree. I know of another student that it wasn’t much financial as it was she was a married student whose husband did not want her to come to school because he felt she should stay home and take care of home. She enrolled and she later told me that she would not have been able to get through it had this campus not been here because it was close to her home, she could go home and she had to study when he was away. And she would not have been able to do this kind of thing probably if it had been a long way away. So although hers was not a financial thing it was a thing of apparently her husband not wanting her to devote all her time there. So this was, made it possible for her to come. Other students who had married and that perhaps the finances and carrying out a family, this made it a little bit easier. I really didn’t encounter too many students who financially might not have been able to go to college except maybe for the thought of having to travel, and to pay dorm and that kind of a thing. I think the campuses that are local really frees that kind of a thing up. These students didn’t seem to have great concerns because the campus was here. They didn’t have to worry about going away somewhere looking for somewhere to live, traveling expenses and those kinds of things. So I feel that this is really reaches out to a large number of people who able are then to come to a setting like this. But I also feel that once they take a course, no matter what the course is, they can hear about the campus, they come over and they take something on the campus or they simply drive by it frequently and see so many people and they go to some program whether it’s continuing education or coming to hear a speaker on campus or whatever. It gives them the idea that starts them to thinking, “Oh, it might be interesting to enroll and take a course” and even though they might not have considered that much before but in their minds have thought, “I could become this. I could become that.” And they come over and actually enroll, perhaps in a three hour course or something, because of the size of the campus they can interact perhaps with the faculty. The classroom, the classes aren’t too large so they don’t feel overly intimidated. They can interact there they feel like they can go to the faculty and at the end of the semester, the term or whatever it is they succeed and they think, “Ah, I can do this.” And then go on to take something else and make a decision. “You know, I’ve always wanted to do this or be this or whatever.” I think that’s an overwhelming kind of reason, value of the campus. And I think that can hit people who are right out of high school, people who have been out of high school for a while and had a particular job but always wanted to kind of do something else and come over to try, or people who are older and maybe want to go back and try something and maybe even after their families have grown, their children have grown up. And again because they see that age range of people coming in out they’re not, feeling like, “I’ll be there with all those young people.” And once they get in the class and they see the different age groups they find it very growth-producing to have experiences with people who are younger than I am and the younger people find, feel wonderful interacting and learning the older, what they see as older…
5.05 MRR Yeah.
5.05 FD Individual.
5.08 MRR I think we have time for one more question and that question is about diversity. You talked about age diversity, a little bit about income diversity. What about demographic diversity in terms of gender, ethnic groups, language among the students?
5.30 FD Yeah, I think demographic as far as gender that’s the easiest one for me to start, particularly in the nursing program, is interesting because many people thought of that as just being female and I’ll be really quick I hope with this. I remember on this campus there were, there were two doctors here who were specialists and had two sons. One of the doctors came into my office one day to talk to me. Would I consider maybe trying to get admitted, help his son get into the nursing program. His son was a student at the, at another university here in Ohio in business but he said he didn’t feel that his son would do that and he wasn’t, he didn’t feel that he could. So, I told him, “Ok, have him come in.” In the long run he was admitted. He made it through the nursing program but not only him, his brother came it into the nursing program. They were among the early male students. Two male students who came from a family with strong medical background. Both of those students have turned, I’ve heard from in some years, and are very successful. They do not live in Ohio but that was kind of like getting that gender in to some extent. It was not real, it wasn’t a usual thing to have lots of men. So we’ve got the gender in those areas and there followed much more since then.
7.25 MRR I think that’s wonderful. Right.
7.26 FD As far as color, I mean ethnic, I haven’t seen a great change in nursing but certainly it has been there and in some ways I have because I entered nursing in a program that was the first program in the whole state I was in even to admit students of any color. I think it is open and people are coming and being local it does help to increase that, I certainly think that. I think that we’re looking at now a bigger number of people from various ethnic backgrounds, not just black and white but all of the others, Spanish and Oriental and the whole thing and that’s wonderful. I think that works out very well on the campus like Middletown’s campus. Economically, I think I hit that, I think it hit many of those. Gender-wise I think it, what was the other one that you wanted me?
8.38 MRR I think we’re there.
8.39 FD Oh, ok.
8.40 MRR Yeah. I think that’s it. Ok, is there anything else you want to go on record about?
8.48 FD I do think, I think there’s great value in the campuses. I came to Middletown campus reluctantly, not because of Middletown association. I was so comfortable where I was. It’s good to get out of your comfort zone and I must say the thing that I found in the campuses, this was the second campus of this kind that I had been in, was how welcoming the community was, how welcoming the faculty was and how Dr. Governanti and the whole staff helped to make the transition, helped to make the transition. I was very happy here once I got here. And as I said, mine had nothing to do with anything except my comfort zone of moving from a place where I had felt really comfortable and going to a place where I didn’t know people and didn’t want to go through that process again. I think this is one of the pluses of campuses like the Middletown campus of Miami University. I think it is wonderful to open up avenues for students. Anything that can be done in this day and time to encourage students no matter what age to get as much education as they desire or wish or learn or find out that they would like, is wonderful and this is what I think it good. I think the programming overall having continuing education, having programs, having those kinds of things available just to get people to walk on the campus is really an important aspect. So, it’s wonderful to see the growth. It’s wonderful to see how this campus has grown and it has grown since I’ve been there. The big buildings, the people, the number of people, the different offices, this is good. I think its small enough you get to know the people you work with and that’s a wonderful feeling. Not just the people in your department but you get to know other people there and that’s wonderful. I think as I look back at mine there was a time, and it was so small then, there were Christmas, family would have Christmas walks or moving dinners or whatever those things were called. You can’t maybe do all of them but you have other ways of doing it now but it’s grown from that. But this was a way of interacting with everyone. Yes, I think it’s a real positive thing, it’s. I think I need to stop.
11.53 MRR I think we can, so do I have your permission to discontinue this recording?
11.58 FD Sure
11.59 MRR Thank you.

Indexing terms for the finding aid:

Applied Science
Baccalaureate degrees
Basald, Ruth Ann
Children’s Hospital
Cincinnati Children’s Hospital
Curriculum Committee
Dayton Children’s Hospital
Diversity
Fort Hamilton Hospital
Governanti, Michael
Hospital
Liberal Arts
McCreana, Sister Miriam
Mercy Hospital
Mercy School of Nursing
Middletown Hospital
National League of Nurses
Nursing program
Pearson, Olamae
Phelps, Bernard
Thesken, Earl

Interviewer

Marsha Robinson

Interviewee

Floye Jean Dockery

Location

Johnston Hall, Miami University Middletown

Citation

“Sweet MUMories Oral History Project - Floye Jean Dockery,” First to 50 - Miami University Middletown Digital Archive, accessed March 29, 2024, https://mum50.omeka.net/items/show/1067.