Distinguished Alumni

Roberta J. Gerds (Langton), B.S. ’54, M.N. ’77
Gerds was a pre-nursing student at UCLA when the School of Nursing began to admit students to the new baccalaureate program; more than two decades after she graduated, she returned to the school and earned her master’s degree in 1977. During her career Gerds worked in staff nursing (mainly in maternity/labor and delivery settings), public health nursing and teaching. She was a childbirth educator who taught training classes for other childbirth educators and was active in the Childbirth Education Association. Gerds’ teaching career included 18 years at California State University, Bakersfield, from which she retired in 2000. She was active in the community, working with the Maternal, Child and Adolescent Health Council of Kern County, the Breastfeeding Promotion Coalition, Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies of Kern County, and the KCEOC Health Advisory Council. In retirement Gerds has been working with members of her church to assist people in the congregation who need help in managing healthcare needs.
 

After earning her B.S. as part of the school’s fourth graduating class, Ivey became a public health nurse for the City of San Bernardino. With five years of experience, she returned to UCLA and earned an M.S. in Nursing Administration. Ivey then went back to the San Bernardino County Health Department as a supervising public health nurse and progressed through positions of increasing responsibility until she became chief of community health services, a position she held for 10 years. In that role, Ivey worked actively to solve the problems of the community by collaborating with and leading communities in addressing issues of children at risk, homelessness, hearing impairment, ethics, teen pregnancy, and healthcare reform. In 1999, Ivey was involved in the planning and implementation of a Masters in Nursing program at California State University San Bernardino; she was a consultant for the program from 1999 until her death in 2008. Ivey also served as an associate clinical professor at Loma Linda University School of Nursing for 25 years and as a lecturer at the UCLA School of Nursing.

Rose Marie Nesbit, B.S. ’57
Having graduated from the school with highest honors, Nesbit went on to work as a public health nurse for the Los Angeles County Health Department in Inglewood, and later at the Santa Monica Health Center assisting the assistant district health officer in providing immunizations for parochial school children throughout Los Angeles County. Well after Nesbit’s formal nursing career ended, she has continued to promote the profession through her support of the school. Nesbit was chair of the Board of Advisors under Dean Ada Lindsey and Dean Marie Cowan. With her husband, Dr. Richard Nesbit, she was active on a committee that successfully raised funds to establish the Lulu Wolf Hassenplug Endowed Chair in honor of the school’s founding dean.

 
 
 

Bernice Doyle Nelson, B.S. ’58
After graduating from the school in 1958, Nelson began a career as a public health nurse in Los Angeles, rising through the ranks to become the clinical nursing director for the North County Health Centers in 1992. She was in that position in 1994 when the region was devastated by the Northridge earthquake. More than 20,000 residents were left homeless, water and electricity were cut off, health centers closed, the Mid-Valley Comprehensive Health Center was severely damaged and Olive View Medical Center curtailed most of its services. Nelson and her nursing staff began operating a triage clinic in their center’s parking lot, and within days had set up tents to give immunizations, triage tuberculosis patients, and provide physical exams for children and prenatal patients. The services proved invaluable, and the nursing staff earned the commendation of then-Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Donna Shalala.