Alumni and Their Stories

Graduates shared stories of various directions their careers in nursing had taken.  One established a Geriatric Care Management Practice.  Another, a critical care nurse, became a writer and wrote 9 books about nursing, one reaching the New York Times Bestseller list.  Several graduates were in the military - US Army medical reserve corps, US Navy, and Army Nurse Corp.  

Many graduates described nursing in communities abroad.  One graduate works as PACU team member on medical missions with Alliance for Smiles to Third World Countries, such as China, Philippines, Ghana, Rwanda, and Inner Mongolia, performing surgery on children with cleft lip/palate.  Another graduate is Associate Director of the UCSF’s Vietnam Nurse Project, traveling for the past 10 years to Vietnam to work with nursing students, faculties, clinical nurses, and nurse leaders to advance their clinical practice, education, and advancement of the nursing profession in Vietnam.

Included in many of the graduates’ stories were examples of career advancements, awards and recognitions, and involvement in innovations in practice.  There were many expressions of gratitude for their nursing education and experiences.  Read these stories for a glimpse into the lives of College of Marin nursing graduates.

1970's

1980's

1990's

2000's
 

Some selected excerpts...
 

Amy Fry – 2006

I'm a Neonatal Intensive Care nurse at UCSF and I absolutely love it!
I'm forever grateful to the College of Marin for all that it did for me to prepare for an extraordinary career.


Cynthia Jensen – 1992

I will say that my education at COM in terms of preparing me to be a nurse was far superior to my BSN and MSN programs! And I will be forever indebted to my instructors for helping me graduate even after I had the hair brained idea to get pregnant my second year and deliver on graduation day. I had to go on bed rest for pre-eclampsia at the very end of school and risked not graduating. Carol Zeller came to MGH for 2 weeks after graduation so I could do my clinical preceptorship and finish. The dedication of the staff to the students is astounding. Because I graduated on time and had finished my preceptorship I was hired into a NICU new grad training program at UCSF during a time when there were very few jobs. I have been at UCSF since October 12th, 1992 and have had a wonderful career in an environment where I learn something new every day.


Marsha Kobrin (Marsha Thomas) – 1989

I began my career as a med/surg nurse. I did that while my kids were small, working only weekends so I could spend more time with my family. I went on to finish my bachelor's degree in nursing at SFSU. It was there that I was introduced to public health and fell in love with it. I had worked for the County of Marin for 12 years in women's health and another hodgepodge of other per diem positions until that program was eliminated. I have been working at Marin Community Clinics for the past 5 years also working with women in my areas of expertise in gynecology and obstetrics. My specialties are family planning and adolescent health. As a bilingual nurse in the County of Marin, I have worked with generations of women helping them carefully plan the spacing and timing of their families while supporting them during their pregnancies. I feel privileged to work in the same community where I live, and where I was trained as a nurse.


Kendra Downey – 1985

I am so grateful for my nursing education at College of Marin. I was able to have a varied 30-year professional life in Nursing because of the depth and variety of my education. I was a midwife, childbirth educator, office nurse, clinic nurse and beginning in 1992 an OB/GYN nurse practitioner.
I am retired now and happy to be able to pursue artistic endeavors, travel, help with grandchildren and take classes at COM.


Mary Pieper-Warren (Mary Gregory) – 1978

I never dreamed that I would become a Registered Nurse; I would never be able to keep my shoes that clean. I was going to become a writer. I believed in the power of words and the truths that stories can reveal. 

The story I like to tell is that I became a nurse be an accident.  My Baccalaureate Degree in English Literature was not the hoped-for key to professional and financial independence. A College of Marin counselor asked if I had ever considered the RN program. I hadn’t. And so a new story began.

After graduation in 1978, I worked first at Highland Hospital in Oakland, and then a year later was hired as an orthopedic nurse at Marin General Hospital. I spent 30 years as a hospital nurse, moving from novice to expert, from a medical-surgical unit to the intensive care unit, from staff nurse to charge nurse, to nurse leader. Along the way, I always looked for and was sustained by my patient’s stories of their individual lives. Polished shoes didn’t seem so important anymore. What mattered was the common thread of humanity in all of us.

In 2003, I began teaching part-time at the College of Marin nursing program. On my first day teaching a nursing skills laboratory, I knew that this was where I belonged. In 2009 I joined the faculty full time while simultaneously completing my MSN degree. During my tenure as COM faculty, I became an expert in high fidelity simulation, presented at international simulation conferences, and served on the Curriculum Committee. As Assistant Director, I fostered faculty consensus and teamwork and coordinated the curriculum revision project.

Teaching nursing has given me the opportunity to give back to the program that launched my career and to rekindle a love of the profession. Forty years later, I look back on a long career filled with challenges and achievements. Most of all I cherish the stories of the patients I have cared for and the students I have mentored. And so it began and so it ends with a sustaining belief in the power of words to give meaning to our lives.


Marilyn Gunning – 1973

As a married woman with 3 children, I fulfilled a childhood dream by graduating from COM nursing program at 41 years old (1973). I worked for 25 years doing hospital, psyc, and finally clinic work at Kaiser. Never bored. Always learning new things. One of the Most rewarding experiences of my life Could not have done it without College of Marin. Thank you from a very grateful 82-year-old.


Carol Pozo – 1972

I married at 18 2weeks after graduating high school. We had 3 daughters in 5 years. I was a "stay at home mom" with no work skills. We had a scare when my husband, the bread winner, developed thyroid cancer in his 30's. He had a successful surgery. During this time, I looked at the nurses working at the old Ross Hospital. I had just read an article in the IJ about the first graduating class of nurses at COM. I said to myself " I will be one of them." So the journey began. It wasn't easy but I made it graduating in 1972. My first job was at French Hosp. I worked as a floor nurse for a year then they sent me to an advanced ICU/CCU/ class. I stay another year working in their ICU then got tired of the commute and in 1975 went to work for Kaiser in their brand new ICU. I was 35 yrs old. It was the best thing I ever did for myself, becoming an RN.! I worked in various positions over the years ICU, infection control, wound care, advice nurse, continuity of care, my last job there was in Employee health. I retired in 2010 at age 72 after 35 yrs at Kaiser. It was a wonderful journey.