Myrtle Kitchell Aydelotte
Myrtle Kitchell Aydelotte was considered a visionary by many for her work in leading the University of Iowa’s College of Nursing during its infancy in the 1950s and beyond.
Born in 1917 in Van Meter, she graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1939 and joined the Army Nurse Corps, serving in Africa and Italy during World War II.
Upon her return to the United States after the war, the former Myrtle Kitchell gained the first of her firsts, becoming the first dean of UI’s new College of Nursing in 1949. According to Liz Swanson, an associate professor and director of external relations in the nursing college, Kitchell was the main drive behind reorganization of the nursing school into a formal college, setting standards for tuition, admission and faculty recruitment. Kitchell also worked on developing a faculty manual for the college and a new curriculum for students.
“It is critical to note that through Dr. Myrtle Kitchell Aydelotte’s efforts and work, the University of Iowa moved from preparing nurses in a three-year training school to the establishment of a four-year bachelor’s degree in nursing at the University of Iowa College of Nursing,” Swanson said in an e-mail.
Eleven years after resigning as dean in 1957, Aydelotte, who had married UI history professor William Aydelotte in 1956, was named nursing director of what became UI Hospitals and Clinics. She is the only former nursing college dean to have accomplished this, Swanson said.
Aydelotte and her colleague Marie Tener also were the first to receive a federally funded research project to study how increasing nursing staff and better training influences patients’ welfare, Swanson said.
After retiring in 1976, she held positions in the American Nurses Association and the Center for Nursing Innovations as well as visiting professorships at the University of Illinois College of Nursing and Yale University. She was considered a national authority on societal change and how it affects the delivery of health care, according to a biography of Aydelotte on the Iowa Women’s Archives Web site.
Aydelotte died Jan. 7 in Rochester, N.Y., at the age of 92.