Dr. Susan J. Grobe '63 honored with Distinguished Alumna Award

July 09, 2013

A nursing informatics pioneer, Dr. Susan J. Grobe, will be honored during SUNY Plattsburgh’s 2013 Reunion festivities this weekend.

The member of the Class of 1963 will receive the Plattsburgh Alumni Association’s Distinguished Alumna Award, which honors graduates for their achievements, humanitarian efforts and/or contributions to the college.

Grobe — who served as the La Quinta Motor Inns Inc. Centennial Professor of Nursing at the University of Texas at Austin from 1992 until 2006 — spent more than 30 years in nursing informatics, a field that integrates information technology with healthcare.

She received many honors for contributions to nursing informatics, becoming the first of two nurse fellows elected to the American College of Medical Informatics; the first nurse invited to serve on the National Library of Medicine Board of Scientific Counselors; the first nurse to serve as host for the International Medical Informatics Association Nursing Informatics Symposia; and the first and only nurse to receive an honorary degree at Orebro University in Sweden.

Grobe’s other accomplishments include hosting the first national continuing education conference on computer-assisted instruction at The University of Texas, Austin, in 1983; publication of the Computers in Nursing journal with Dr. Gary Hales; and development of the Nursing Education Module Authoring System, software programs used by nursing faculty to create computer-assisted instruction modules.

She also studied the automated classification of nursing interventions and developed the Nursing Intervention Lexicon and Taxonomy — a language and classification system used to describe patterns of care for patients in automated data records. In addition, she has published extensively in scientific and educational journals, writing one of the first computer books for nurses, “Computer Primer and Resource Guides for Nurses” in 1984.

A longtime supporter of SUNY Plattsburgh, Grobe showed her dedication to the nursing program recently by helping establish the Nursing Alumni Scholarship Endowment with the Class of 1963, as well as serving on the 50th Reunion committee for that year.

“The combination of Dr. Grobe’s significant professional accomplishments and her sustained involvement in the college made her the perfect candidate to receive the award this year,” said Toni Anne Nichels '88, president of the Plattsburgh Alumni Association Board of Directors.

The award will be presented to Grobe at the 9:30 a.m. Golden Anniversary Breakfast Saturday, July 13.