Meet the new Dean of the College of Nursing
Nurse and midwife Dr. Kellie Thiessen returns to UM
On Feb. 1, Dr. Kellie Thiessen assumed the role of dean of the College of Nursing in the Rady Faculty of Health Sciences.
Born in Kansas, Thiessen earned bachelor’s degrees in nursing and liberal arts with emphasis on Spanish from Eastern Mennonite University in Virginia before completing a master’s in nursing with an emphasis in midwifery at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. In 2014, she completed a PhD in applied health sciences at the University of Manitoba.
We recently spoke to Thiessen about her career and vision for the college.
What inspired you to pursue a career in nursing and health education?
I had an aunt and uncle who were very involved in social justice work internationally. My aunt was the CEO of Save the Children Canada for many years, and they were involved with other non-governmental organizations (NGOs). I was very close to them and they were highly influential throughout my childhood. I lost my uncle when I was 16, and he was planning to move from agriculture and development to nursing. That really inspired me to consider health care, just because I looked up to them most of my life.
What are some of your proudest accomplishments in your career?
A couple of things come to mind. I’ve mostly worked in rural and remote health as a nurse and a midwife, and I spent a fair bit of time in remote parts of Alaska where I developed a child wellness program that involved immunizations, developmental checks, dental care and other health service care for kids. When I went into the program, it was struggling and only reached five small communities. But by the time I left, years later, we were reaching 48 villages in the Yukon–Kuskokwim Delta and providing comprehensive care for kids.
The other was being part of the Canadian Child Health Clinician Scientist Program, now known as Enhancing Research Impact in Child Health (EnRICH), out of the Children’s Hospital Research Institute of Manitoba (CHRIM), which I was part of from April 2017 to March 2021.
Who are your mentors? Is there anyone that you would say has helped shape your career?
Some of my most significant mentors came out of the CHRIM and their mentorship program. To this day, I’m involved with them in a leadership capacity, but I started out as a mentee. It led to some lifelong friendships, but also outstanding career and research mentorship. Dr. Richard Keijzer, who’s a pediatric surgeon and now associate dean of research at the Max Rady College of Medicine, was specifically instrumental in supporting me.
What’s your vision for the College of Nursing?
Over the last 10 years in this college, I’ve worked alongside leadership through the pandemic, some of the expansion and the development of the midwifery program. I think we’ve grown a lot and don’t necessarily need to get bigger or better. My hope is to bring us together with common goals for the programming that we have, and that we can reflect on our individual responsibility to be excited about leading education and research in health care.
I hope to offer a different style of leadership, one that takes a restorative lens and is really looking at the health of our teams. I like to use a sports analogy because I played sports in college and all through high school. We’re a team and teams win when they put aside their differences, get in sync and rally around the collective good. My goal is to do that despite whatever challenge is put on our plate.
What are some of your interests outside of work?
I spend a lot of time with friends and my immediate family. I have two teenage daughters and my husband, Mike. They are my priority and there are lots of things that we do together – snowshoeing, cross country skiing, camping and small trips to fun local places.
What advice do you have for your students?
Our students bring this incredible talent and diversity, so we have a lot to learn from them and we value this. I would advise students to come with humility and a curiosity to learn about the health-care system they will be working in, and also to pause and sit with tension that comes with learning about different ways of thinking and doing. We’re all human beings at the end of the day, let’s start with that.