Josephine Aloyse Dolan (1913-2004) was a historian and educator who served as the first full-time professor of nursing at the University of Connecticut's School of Nursing.[1] In additional to her teaching responsibilities, Dolan was a historian who collected nursing documents, artifacts, and ephemera, which she donated to the School of Nursing in 1996 to establish the Dolan Collection of Nursing History.[2] After Dolan died, the collection was co-curated by her friend and colleague Eleanor Krohn Herrmann, who died in 2012.[3]
Dolan earned her nursing diploma from St. John's Hospital in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1935. She earned bachelor's and master's degrees in nursing from Boston University in 1942 and 1950.[4] She received honorary doctoral degrees from Rhode Island College in 1974 and from Boston College in 1987.[1] Dolan also served on the board of directors for several professional associations, including the National League for Nursing.[1] She received the League's first Distinguished Service Award in 1972 and was inducted into the American Nurses Association Hall of Fame in 2012.[5] The Connecticut Nurses Association has awarded the Josephine A. Dolan Award for Outstanding Contributions to Nursing Education since 1980.[6] Dolan authored the seminal textbook, Nursing in Society: A Historical Perspective.[7]
