Advising: A Nurse’s Pathway to Accomplishment

Joan M. Ellis, BS, RN Senior Academic Advisor

“It takes nothing to go backwards, but it takes quite a bit to move forward”: The statement has served as a signpost over the years for Joan Ellis, BS, RN, academic advisor at UW-Madison School of Nursing. She hopes that the adage has guided many undergraduate students who have walked through her door ready to carve out their chosen paths in nursing.

Ellis, who will retire in August of 2006, has been a nursing student advisor for thirty years—a role that has tapped into her strengths, challenged her skills, and produced rewarding outcomes. The key to Ellis’s longevity, she reveals, is loving what you do. “I love the challenge of helping students define their goals,” Ellis explains, “and I love helping them attain those goals … shaping their academic careers around a well-constructed academic program.”

Katharyn A. May, dean of the School of Nursing, attests to Ellis's skill as an advisor: “Joan’s commitment to our students, in combination with her knowledge and skill as a nursing advisor, is legendary on campus. Her work over the years has been a major factor in the success of our undergraduate program and the reputation for strong academics that we currently enjoy."

Early on in Ellis’s career, advising was an unknown variable. In 1964, she graduated from St. John’s Hospital School of Nursing in Springfield, Illinois, with a hospital-based nursing diploma (3-year program). Her focus was psychiatric nursing. She accepted her first nursing role at Wisconsin General Hospital in Madison, currently University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics.

After three years’ service at Wisconsin General, she transferred to Mendota Mental Health Institute in Madison. In the early 1970s, the Mendota Health facility restructured its health care delivery system. Under the Program of Assertive Community Treatment, or PACT, nurses with four-year baccalaureate degrees were sent into the community to work with patients in mental health treatment programs; nurses with hospital-based diplomas remained at the hospital performing inpatient care. Ellis knew she wanted to practice community-based psychiatric nursing, so she took leave from Mendota Mental Health to enroll at UW-Madison School of Nursing. Upon her graduation, the Mendota facility would reassign her to practice out in the community.

While a student, Ellis was approached by the school’s leadership offering her a career as an advisor. Ellis declined the long-term offer, but said that she would advise for a semester, while on leave. She never returned to Mendota, but settled comfortably into the role of academic advisor.

“My first role was advising in the school’s Equal Opportunity Program,” Ellis says. “I taught survival skills—how to study and how to navigate a campus the size of the UW.” Having accumulated a reservoir of field experience and skills over the years, Ellis today advises sophomore through senior nursing students—all having diverse needs, different areas of concentration, and an array of academic options.

Sharon Nellis, MPA, assistant dean for academic affairs and outreach and Ellis’s colleague for twenty-one years, attributes Ellis’s success as an academic advisor to a well-balanced blend mix of advising and mentoring. “Joan is a good listener,” says Nellis, “and listening is the core of a strong advising system. She has the ability to guide students … to give them the tools and skills to grasp that sense of intellectual direction.”

May concurs, "She has helped literally hundreds of our students to succeed in their studies, and thus, in their careers.”

Joan Ellis surrounded by her colleagues in Academic Programs: (seated from left) Sharon Nellis, Joan Ellis, Marsha Quick, (standing from left) Jane Schimmel, Deb Hopke, Nadine Nehls, Sandra Little, Gina Florek, Marcia Voss, Nancy Wiley, Pam Springer, Mary Langenfeld.

Ellis’s scope of knowledge in curricular advising has not gone untapped. In 1993, she was appointed by the School of Nursing leadership to represent the school on the UW's Council on Academic Advising. At that time, the membership constituted deans, assistant deans, and professors. “Not one to back down from a challenge” says Ellis, “I went forward. What I could contribute was an advisor’s perspective on how to best satisfy the needs of the student. She has continued to serve on the council offering her expertise.

When Ellis looks back over her thirty-year tenure, one of her proudest moments came when speaking out on behalf of the student. “I noticed that the school was one of the few schools not offering a congratulatory statement on the end-of-semester report.” She brought the issue before the school’s Undergraduate Program Committee, asking “Why not?” Through her efforts, the committee designed a mechanism to acknowledge a job well done on a student’s grade report.

Ellis likes what she sees in the latest wave of undergraduate students. “What stands out loud and clear is the increased interest in graduate school,” says Ellis. “Even before they're admitted to the major, many are asking about graduate education.” This is a welcomed trend, she adds, since nursing educators are key to solving the nursing shortage.

Upon retirement, Ellis takes with her an image that is even more striking in retrospect than it was in 1964, when her professional journey began. Today, it symbolizes her longstanding relationship with University of Wisconsin-Madison. “I stood in front of the old brick hospital on University Avenue,” says Ellis, “and read the words carved above the door—The State of Wisconsin General Hospital. I thought to myself, ‘my future begins here.’”