The Theorist

BACKGROUND AND CREDENTIALS OF THE THEORIST:

By Jhoana Lurian and Lei Kristel Lontoc

ANNE BOYKIN

Anne Boykin grew up in Kaukauna, Wisconsin, the eldest of six children. She begun her career in nursing in 1966, graduating from Alverno College in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She received her, master’s degree from Emory University Atlanta, Georgia, and her doctorate from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. South Florida became her home in 1981 and, today, continues to enchant and nourish her love for the natural life. Dr. Boykin is married to Steve Staudenmeyer, and they have four children.

         Anne Boykin is dean and professor of the Christine E. Lynn College of Nursing at Florida Atlantic University. She is the director of the Christine E. Lynn Center for Caring, which is housed in the College of Nursing. This center was created for the purpose of humanizing care through the integration of teaching, research, and service. Boykin has demonstrated a longstanding commitment to the advancement of knowledge in the discipline, especially regarding the phenomenon of caring.

        Positions she has held within the International Association for Human Caring include president elect (1990 - 1993 ), president ( 1993-1996 ) and member of the nominating committee (1997 - 1999 ). As immediate past president, she served as coeditor of the journal, International Association for Human Caring, from 1996 to 1999.

        Boykin's scholarly work is centered on caring as the grounding for nursing. This is evidenced in her book ( coauthored with Schoenhofer). Nursing as Caring: A Model for Transforming Practice (1993, 2001a), and the book, Living a Caring-Based Program (1994b). The latter book illustrates how caring grounds the development of a nursing program from creating the environment for study through evaluation. In addition to these books Dr. Boykin is editor of Power, Politics and Public Policy: A Matter of Caring (1995) and co-editor ( along with Gaut) of Caring as Healing: Renewal Through Hope (1994). She has also written numerous book chapters and articles and serves as a consultant locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally on the topic of caring.

   She was honored with the 2009 Visionary Caring Science Award by the Watson Caring Science Institute. The Watson Caring Science Institute is anon-profit foundation whose mission is to continue and expand the nature and depth of the work of Caring and healing in health care. Currently, she and Dr.Shoenhofer are engaged in a two-year funded demonstration project. The purpose of this project is to demonstrate the value of a model for health care delivery in an acute care setting that is intentionally grounded in Nursing as Caring.

Message from Ms. Anne Boykin

SAVINA O. SCHOENHOFER

Savina Schoenhofer was born the second child and eldest daughter in a family of nine children and spent her formative years on the family cattle ranch in Kansas. She is named for her maternal grandfather, who was a classical musician in Kansas City, Missouri. She has a daughter, Carrie and a grand-daughter Emma.

During the 1960s, Schoenhofer spent 3 years in the Amazon region of Brazil, working as a volunteer in a community development. Her initial nursing study was at Wichita University, where she earned undergraduate degrees in nursing, psychology and counselling. She completed a Ph.D. In educational foundations and administration at Kansas State University in 1983. In 1990, Schoenhofer co-founded Nightingale Songs, an early venue for communicating the beauty of nursing in poetry and prose.An early study made it apparent to Schoenhofer that caring was the service that patients overwhelmingly recognized. In addition to her work on caring, including coauthorship with Boykin of Nursing as Caring: A Model for Transforming Practice (1993, 2001a), Schoenhofer has written numerous articles on nursing values, primary care, nursing education, support, touch, personnel management in nursing homes and mentoring.

Her career in nursing has been influenced significantly by three colleagues: Lt. Col. Ann Ashjian (Ret.), whose community nursing practice in Brazil presented an inspiring model of nursing; Marilyn E. Parker, Ph.D., a faculty colleague who mentored her in the idea of nursing as a discipline, the academic role in higher education, and the world of nursing theories and theorists; and Anne Boykin, Ph.D., who introduced her to caring as a substantive field of nursing study. Schoenhofer created and manages the Web site and discussion forum on the theory of Nursing as Caring. She is currently a professor of graduate nursing at the Cora S. Balmat School of Nursing, Alcorn State University, Natchez, Mississippi, and lives her commitment and passion for illuminating the study of nursing as caring.

            Dr. Shoenhofer is a co-founder of the nursing aesthetics publication, Nightingale Songs.Her research and publication were in the areas of everyday caring, outcomes of caring in nursing, nursing values, nursing home management, and affectional touch.