Celebrating the Life of Rhetaugh Dumas(Mon 25 Feb 2008) 
Yale University School of Nursing recently honored one of our most distinguished alumnae. Rhetaugh Graves Dumas '61, PhD, RN, FAAN, passed away this past July at the age of 78. She was a trailblazer and dynamic leader in nursing who was the first woman, first African American, and first nurse to be formally appointed as deputy director of the National Institute of Mental Health. Rhetaugh, who holds a MSN from Yale, was the first nurse to conduct a randomized experimental design to study clinical nursing problems. She served as of the University of Michigan School of Nursing, Vice Provost of Health Affairs at UM and Lucille Cole Professor of Nursing. In 1997, Professor Dumas was named Dean Emerita and Vice Provost Emerita of the University of Michigan.
Rhetaugh Dumas entered YSN in 1959 at a time of transition. The old MN program closed with the last class graduating in 1958, and the new MSN degrees were awarded for the first time in 1957. The early years of the MSN program focused on clinical practice and research and theory development. It was clear that research would be critical to survival at Yale, but for faculty at Yale (and throughout nursing), research was virtually unknown. There was no nursing research presence at the National Institute of Health (NIH), and while the journal, "Nursing Research," was first published in 1952, the majority of studies were by non-nurses and focused on nurses' work patterns rather than on clinical nursing studies aimed at improving patient outcomes and care.
Those years were dynamic and witnessed significant growth for Yale University School of Nursing. During this time, Rhetaugh played an important role at YSN, as research faculty in a burgeoning new science and as specialty director for Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing and Director of Nursing at CMHC.
Rhetaugh was in the middle of so many innovations at YSN and in nursing. She resigned from YSN in 1974, but her legacy lives on in many of us (including me, who entered YSN in 1974 to become a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner, but left committed to the kind of research career that Rhetaugh modeled for an entire generation). She made an extraordinary difference and touched many people. In so many ways, Rhetaugh embodied the spirit of our school's mission statement – "Better health care for all people."
We are proud to call her a Distinguished Alumna.
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