Dr. Sampselle Recognized for a Career of Women’s Advocacy
Dr. Carolyn Sampselle receives the U-M Sarah Goddard Power Award.
In 1975, on the cusp of an unprecedented rise in employee diversity, a group of women at the University of Michigan formed the Academic Women’s Caucus, an organization whose goal was to overcome inequity issues in the workplace. To this day, one of the caucus’s ongoing initiatives is the administration of the Sarah Goddard Power Award. Since 1984, this annual award has been presented to distinguished University of Michigan faculty and senior administrative staff whose professional activities have contributed to the betterment of women through scholarship, leadership, and service.
This year, joining past winners Rhetaugh G. Dumas (1984), Lois W. Gage (1996), and Carol J. Boyd (2008), Dr. Carolyn Sampselle will become the University of Michigan School of Nursing’s fourth member to be recognized with the U-M Sarah Goddard Power Award. The Carolyne K. Davis collegiate professor of nursing and director of the Community Engagement Program at the Michigan Institute for Clinical and Health Research, Dr. Sampselle’s research and scholarly engagement represent a long career committed to the betterment of women’s health and their quality of living through science. Using an interdisciplinary approach, Dr. Sampselle and her colleagues have created a self-management program for women suffering from urinary incontinence (UI). This series of educational tools and pelvic floor exercises have proven remarkably effective in helping women deal with the uncomfortable, inconvenient, and at times debilitating symptoms of UI (read more about this program of research). As a university professor who supported Dr. Sampselle’s nomination put it, “Dr. Sampselle works in a very difficult area of research of women’s health. The long neglected problems of urinary incontinence and vaginal delivery suffer from the stigmas of embarrassing conditions that few would like to think about or talk about. The science in this area is very challenging because these are quality of life issues that don’t have hard end points, and Dr. Sampselle [has an] excellent track record in developing new and unique ways to be able to quantify outcomes.”
And making urinary incontinence the center of her research career isn’t the only way Dr. Sampselle pushes the boundaries of commonly acknowledged research topics. In 2010, Dr. Sampselle nominated Ruth Zielinski, then a doctoral student on the verge of completing her dissertation, for the University of Michigan Proquest Distinguished Dissertation award in recognition of her work with genital body image. Now with the title Dr. Zielinksi, Ruth was the first School of Nursing doctoral student to win the award, gaining much deserved recognition both for herself and for her committee advisors, including Dr. Lisa Kane Low and Dr. Janis Miller, both of whom were themselves protégés of Dr. Sampselle at one point.
Thinking back to her first interactions with Dr. Sampselle, Dr. Miller recalls that a few days after she was accepted into the PhD program at the U-M School of Nursing, she found out that she was pregnant, something she hadn’t necessarily planned to happen while beginning her doctoral program. Nervous about how Dr. Sampselle – her advisor who she didn’t know very well at this point – would react, she spent all day drafting a letter explaining that she could still be a great doctoral candidate: “I was so surprised when later that day I got a response from Dr. Sampselle that began, ‘What wonderful news for you!’ But now I know that’s the thing about her, she’s see the positive and the opportunity in everything.” Dr. Kane Low agreed, adding “She understands the complexities of people’s lives, of women’s lives. She comes from a strong feminist background so she believes that opportunities should be there and always finds methods of working past barriers that might be in the way.”
Ultimately, both Dr. Kane Low and Dr. Miller say time and again that one of Dr. Sampselle’s most remarkable qualities is the way that she fights for what’s right even if it means seeing potentially prohibitive rules or regulations in a creative way so that they don’t become barriers. An example of this, the two doctors explain, is her grant writing ability. “She has a way of believing so heartily in what she does that it flows through her pencil into a grant application and gets her the resources she needs in order to be able to accomplish her goals for the betterment of all,” says Dr. Miller, admitting her admiration and even envy of this trait. Specifically, in writing a major grant that involved getting funds for a particular content area of study, e.g., cardiovascular disease, Dr. Sampselle applied for and won the grant for the much more general category of intervention studies, something that had never been done before. “She just sees the bigger picture and makes it happen,” says Dr. Kane Low.
Dr. Kane Low posits that perhaps it is Dr. Sampselle’s ability to think outside of the box that makes her a great teacher and mentor. It is also, she adds, her fundamental ability to see the value in what each individual brings to the table: “In the classroom, she is always working to help students find ways that they can make a unique contribution, listening to the beginning formations of their ideas, and giving them the resources and framework to connect this to the larger picture.” And this is a key component of Dr. Sampselle’s legacy. As Dr. Sampselle’s nominators said in her nomination package, “we want to uniquely emphasize the legacy she has built of mentees, a true testament to her selfless contributions to building the next generation of scholars and academics who can sustain the vision she has provided for excellence in scholarship, education, and advocacy for social justice for the betterment of women at the University of Michigan and beyond.”
What it comes down to is that Dr. Sampselle is a skilled and effective researcher, an avid advocate for women and women’s health, and an inspiring mentor and teacher. As Dr. Kane Low concluded, “If ever there were an award to honor the true legacy that Dr. Sampselle is building, it is the Sarah Goddard Power Award.”
School of Nursing community members and friends are invited to celebrate Dr. Sampselle’s achievement Wednesday, February 16 at 4pm in the Hussey Room of the Michigan League. See details.
