TERRE HAUTE, Ind. -- Indiana State University will recognize the departing president of Ivy Tech Community College and a nursing pioneer with honorary degrees during spring commencement May 5.
Gerald I. Lamkin
Lamkin, who will be honored with a doctor of laws degree, has served as president of Ivy Tech Community College since January 1983. Prior to assuming the presidency, he served in a variety of roles with Ivy Tech since coming to the institution in June 1967.
Prior to Ivy Tech, Lamkin served as a senior counselor at Arsenal Technical High School in Indianapolis from September 1962 to May 1968. He earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree in business from Indiana State and completed post graduate studies to earn administrative licenses and certificates at Ball State University.
Ivy Tech has grown and changed during Lamkin’s presidency. Among the most visible was the Indiana General Assembly approval of a law changing the institution’s name in 2005, achieving college-wide re-accreditation by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, upgrading libraries at all 23 Ivy Tech campuses and improving Ivy Tech facilities in South Bend, Lafayette, Bloomington, Richmond, Evansville and Terre Haute. He also worked to improve students’ ability to transfer general education credits to four-year colleges and universities and to articulate two-year Ivy Tech degrees to programs at four-year institutions.
A veteran of the United States Air Force, Lamkin is a member of the American Legion Post #59 in Rising Sun, and serves on a number of community organizations and associations including the Indiana National Guard Foundation, the Indiana Society of Chicago, the International Sheet Metal Accreditation Board and the board of deacons of the Zion Evangelical Church of Christ in Indianapolis.
Lamkin has been awarded a Sagamore of the Wabash, the highest award presented to a citizen of Indiana, by five Indiana governors (Robert D. Orr, Evan Bayh, Frank O’Bannon, Joseph Kernan and Mitch Daniels). He was named to the Order of the Kentucky Colonels by Gov. Martha Layne Collins in 1985 and was presented with the Alumnus of the Year Award in 1988 by Indiana State. He received Phi Theta Kappa’s Shirley B. Gordon Distinguished College Presidents’ Award for Two-Year Colleges in 1995 and was presented an Indiana Distinguished Services Award by Gov. Mitch Daniels in 2006.
A native of Rising Sun, Lamkin and his wife, Louise, reside in Indianapolis. They have one son, one daughter and three grandchildren.
Loretta C. Ford
Ford, dean and professor emerita at the University Of Rochester School Of Nursing, is an internationally-known nursing leader. She has devoted her career to practice, education, research and influencing health services, community health and military nursing.
When Ford and Henry Silver, M.D., started the first nurse practitioner program in 1965, at the University of Colorado, no one was certain what the outcome would be. The potential for NPs has become clearer over the years, and NPs are now accepted into the mainstream of healthcare delivery.
Later, convinced of the need to meld nursing education, practice and research, she provided administrative leadership for a Unification model in nursing at the University of Rochester Medical Center as dean of the School of Nursing and director of Nursing at the University’s Strong Memorial Hospital. In addition to serving as a visiting professor, she has led many international education visitations. After retiring from Nursing, she served as an interim dean at University of Rochester’s Graduate School of Education and Human Development.
A native New Yorker, she has been active with a variety of civic organizations, governmental commissions and advisory boards and foundations.
Ford, who will receive a doctor of science degree, earned her advanced degrees at the University of Colorado Schools of Nursing and Education. She holds honorary doctorates from six prestigious Universities and has been recognized with a myriad of awards, including the New York State Governors Award for Women in Science, Medicine and Nursing, the Living Legend Award from the American Academy of Nursing, the American College of Nurse Practitioner’s Crystal Trailblazer Award and the Elizabeth Blackwell Award. She has authored more than 100 publications on the history of the nurse practitioner, unification of practice, education, research and issues in advanced nursing practice.
Ford and her husband, William, have one daughter and reside in Wildwood, Fla.
-30-
Contact and Writer: Paula Meyer, ISU Communications & Marketing, (812) 237-3783 or pmeyer4@isugw.indstate.edu