Judy DeMers announces retirement
Judy DeMers, the longtime associate dean for student affairs and admissions at the UND School of Medicine and Health Sciences (SMHS), will retire Dec. 31.
DeMers says this about her tenure at SMHS: “Over the past 27 years as associate dean, it has been my great pleasure to have worked with five medical school deans, many creative administrators, a highly talented faculty, truly dedicated staff, and very importantly, with more than 1,500 medical students. Although I like to think I have contributed to and enhanced the high quality of our programs and the successes of our students and graduates over the years, I know I will leave this winter having gained much more than I have given. It was never a job for me; it has always been a commitment to the students and to the state of North Dakota—a commitment I hope to continue in other ways in future years.”
DeMers, a Grand Forks native and valedictorian and summa cum laude 1966 graduate of the UND College of Nursing, is a both a registered nurse and certified public health nurse who earned an M.Ed. from the University of Washington in 1973.
As a nurse, health educator, and administrator, DeMers has earned several dozen awards and honors going back to the very start of her career, garnering the Beck Award for Nursing in 1965, several Nurse of the Year awards, including the statewide award in 1983; and several listings in Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who of American Women. She was named to the North Dakota Nurses Association Hall of Fame in 2002.
Joshua Wynne, UND vice president for health affairs and dean of the SMHS, had this to say about DeMers:
“Judy embodies the best of the North Dakotan ethic, and all that is good at the School of Medicine and Health Sciences. She is honest, hard-working, smart, dedicated, helpful, and dedicated to her students. As chair of the executive associate dean search committee, she was responsible for attracting me to UND almost six years ago. So in no small measure, I owe Judy a debt of gratitude for my appointment as dean. She has given extraordinarily outstanding service to our students for decades, and while she will be irreplaceable, she has earned her ‘retirement’. Knowing Judy, though, her ‘retirement’ likely will be anything but ‘retiring’, and I suspect she will continue to find ways to serve, as she has for decades. All of us wish her the best in the next phase of her illustrious career.”
DeMers joined the UND faculty in 1969 as an instructor in public health nursing and was the associate director of, and instructor in, the MEDEX project in the SMHS Department of Family and Community Medicine from 1970 to 1972.
DeMers then spent time as a research associate in the Office of Research and Medical Education at the University of Washington’s medical school through 1977 before returning to UND as assistant professor and director of the Family Nurse Practitioner Program, where she served until 1982. She also was director of the UND medical school’s Focal Problems Course until 1989, and she served for a year as director of undergraduate medical education in the Department of Family Medicine.
From 1982 through 1983, DeMers was associate director of the SMHS Office of Rural Health and was promoted to the rank of associate professor. In 1983, DeMers was appointed to her current position.
In 1982 DeMers was elected to the North Dakota House of Representatives, where she served until 1992. She was elected to the North Dakota State Senate in 1992 and served there until 2000. In both houses, DeMers served with distinction on numerous legislative committees.
Among many other consultancies, DeMers was an on-site evaluator for the American Medical Association’s Committee on Allied Health Education Accreditation from 1979 to 1983. She also was a consultant to the North Dakota state Office of Protection and Advocacy.
In 2009, DeMers received the SMHS Hippocratic Dignity Award. This year, she earned the Outstanding Service Award from the American Association of Medical Colleges Central Group on Student Affairs at the group’s national meeting in Austin, Texas.
In nominating DeMers for the award, Daniel A. Burr, Ph.D., assistant dean for student financial planning at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, said, “In the 30 years that I have been a member of the Group on Student Affairs, I know of no other colleague with a more impressive involvement in educational, social and health care issues. We have been fortunate to have her as a member of our region for 27 years.”
“Judy has never hesitated to challenge the status quo or ask the difficult question,” said Burr. “She is a woman of few words, but they are strong. It is clear she speaks as one closely involved with her students and aware of the effects association policies can have on their lives.”
DeMers has been, and remains, extraordinarily active in many national, regional, and local organizations and committees—the North Dakota Nurses Association, Development Homes, Inc., the Red River Community Action Program, the UND Intercollegiate Athletic Committee, and Democratic NPL Party, to name a few—underscoring her ongoing professional and personal commitment to community service.
Her commitment and service to her profession and to the community have been recognized nationwide not only by her many awards and honors but also by the dozens of invitations she has received to be a keynote speaker, panel member or participant in prestigious conferences, ceremonies, convocations, and hearings.
In retirement, DeMers plans to split her time between Grand Forks, her Grace Lake cabin near Bemidji, and with her family in the Phoenix, Ariz., area.
