Following her life verse Proverbs 3:5-6 (“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.”), Susan Jacob is putting her recent retirement as interim dean of the College of Nursing at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center to good use as an educational outreach consultant of at the Memphis Church Health Center “and a doting grandmother.”

“It is extremely rewarding for me to combine my spiritual gifts with my professional expertise and interests,” says Jacob, whose name has been attached to nursing education for nearly four decades.

“When I chose nursing as a major at West Virginia University in the late ’60s, I had no idea about the career opportunities that would come my way—from acute care nursing in the hospital to home health and hospice in the community, to education and administration in the academic setting,” says the West Virginia native, who holds the distinction of being the first hospice nurse and hospice administrator in Memphis. In 1982, Jacob received the John W. Runyan Award for her efforts toward the development of hospice.

With her bachelor’s degree in nursing, Jacob went on to pursue a master’s degree in nursing from San Jose State University and a doctorate from UTHSC before serving as a tenured professor at the Loewenberg School of Nursing and Union University, where she also served as dean of nursing.

In 2003, she joined the College of Nursing at UTHSC to lead efforts to reestablish the baccalaureate nursing program, which was officially reactivated in the fall of 2012. Prior to being named interim dean in 2011, she was executive associate dean in the UTHSC College of Nursing for eight years.

She has extensive experience in the area of curriculum development and teaching/learning in both the classroom and clinical settings at the undergraduate and graduate levels. She is the coauthor/coeditor of Contemporary Nursing: Issues, Trends and Management, which is a leading Nursing Issues textbook in its 5th edition, and the author of numerous journal articles.

Jacob has consistently served in leadership roles in Sigma Theta Tau International and the Tennessee Nurses Association. She also has served as a delegate to the American Nurses Association for several years. She currently is a board member on the Tennessee Center for Nursing, the Nursing Institute of the Mid South, a founding member of the Southern Region Coalition, and an evaluator for the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education. She also serves as chair of the Professional Advisory Committee for Methodist Alliance Health Services. Jacob’s community service activities is deeply rooted in teaching a Faith Congregation Nurse Basic Preparation course, facilitating grief support groups, mentoring vulnerable expectant moms, and organizing health promotion activities in her church and the community. She and her husband, Dick, have taught a marriage preparation course at their church for more than 23 years.

“Besides 43 years of marriage, our legacy of our three daughters and nine grandchildren, I am most proud of the opportunities that I have had to mentor students and junior faculty. Many of my students are now doctorally-prepared and are in significant leadership positions,” says Jacob, who is the 2013 American Academy of Nurse Practitioners Advocate State Award for Excellence recipient.

“I am also grateful for the many opportunities I have had in my career to share my faith.”