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I met Betty N. Adams, Dean of Prairie View A&M University College of Nursing - Houston, right after she took the helm of Prairie View’s College of Nursing in Houston. Hard to believe, but that was the summer of 2000. Later this year, she’ll step back from steering that great ship through 22 years of daily challenges and extraordinary achievements. But something about this woman told me she’d reach the summit of the mountain of challenge with the grace and poise I came to admire — no covet — over the years
At the time, most people thought Prairie View’s College of Nursing was back in rural Prairie View, a small, rural college town in Waller County. But, in fact, the College of Nursing was housed in the heart of Texas Medical Center. What a great place for Prairie View’s nursing students to finish their training after completing their first two years on the main campus and then coming to Houston where they would train and complete their clinicals in some of the state’s leading hospitals, under the tutelage of some of the country’s best doctors and nurses.
So, here's how it all began. The Fifteenth Texas Legislature, in compliance with the federal Morrill Land-Grant College Act in 1876, (which provided public lands for the establishment of colleges), authorized a state university (UT) as well as an "Agricultural and Mechanical College for the Benefit of Colored Youth" as part of what is now Texas A&M University.
A three-man commis sion bought Alta Vista Plantation, near Hempstead in Waller County, from Helen Marr Kirby for $15,000, and commissioner Ashbel Smith turned the school over to Texas A&M President Thomas S. Gathright. Mississippian L. W. Minor was hired as Prairie View’s first principal, and on March 11, 1878, eight young men enrolled in the short-lived Alta Vista Agricultural College. Tuition was $130 for nine months of instruction, board, and one uniform.
The boys made their own meals and grew their own vegetables, did their own laundry and cleaned their own classrooms.
A&M board chairman, Gov. O.M. Roberts, suggested closing Prairie View in 1879 because of the lack of patronage. But Dr. Barnas Sears, an educational theorist and agent for the Peabody Fund, persuaded the Sixteenth Legislature to charter two "normal" schools for the training of teachers, one of which was named Prairie View Normal Institute. The A&M board met at Hempstead in August 1879, established 13 elementary and secondary subjects and founded the coeducational institution.
However, in 1882, $8,000 in biennium funding ran out, and State Comptroller William M. Brown refused to continue paying the school's debts from the university funds, which forced the governor to solicit money from merchants.
In 1885, L. C. Anderson became the principal of Prairie View as the legislature resolved a heated debate in 1887 by adding an agricultural and mechanical department. Academic Hall and an experiment station were thrown in for good measure.
Edward L. Blackshear was appointed principal in 1895, and Booker T. Washington made his first commencement address at Prairie View on June 4, 1897. The Twenty-sixth Legislature designated the school Prairie View State Normal and Industrial College, and Blackshear had three college graduates in 1904. Though greatly admired, Blackshear lost his position in 1915, as a result of prohibition politics and the election of James E. “Pa” Ferguson as governor.
Principal I.M. Terrell, from Fort Worth public schools, was followed by physician J. G. Osborne, a friend and colleague of Texas A&M president William B. Bizzell, who sanctioned Osborne's efforts in nursing, medicine, and veterinary medicine and backed his efforts to improve Prairie View’s standards and level of instruction by finally establishing a four-year college.
Twenty years ago, when Dr. Adams arrived at PV’s nursing school, enrollment and demand for places in the school’s junior and senior year nursing classes needed attention. Unlike other nursing schools, Prairie View’s undergraduate program was a terminal degree. Endowments and grants, the pulse of any viable university program, were also lacking.
Dr. Adams saw myriad students applying to the school, truly wanting to become nurses, but were academically unprepared for the nursing school sequence. With the nursing shortage skyrocketing, Dr. Adams took the chance of admitting these students, working closely with them through tutoring and remediation of their academic skills. By the time they sat for the registered nursing exams, Prairie View’s pass rate surpassed other schools.
Today, thanks to the leadership of Dr. Adams, Prairie View’s College of Nursing’s programs have been expanded into mas ters’ and doctoral levels of academic studies. Enrollment has tripled. Stellar faculty have been recruited and Betty has planned and overseen construction of a state-of-the-art, new training facility in Texas Medical Center.
Several endowments and grants exceeding $20 million now support the growth and availability of scholarships across programs, attracting more faculty, simulation technology pedagogy and the Doctor of Nursing Practice Degree Program, and the upcoming American Association of Colleges of Nursing, which has contributed in the success of minorities receiving financial assistance for doctoral studies in nursing.
Throughout her career, Dr. Adams has promoted the highest quality of nursing education, practice and research and contributed to the building of nursing’s theory and science. She also has given Prairie View nursing students a voice throughout the sprawling Texas Medical Center as the University’s representative in the Texas Medical Center.
Dr. Adams’ most profound contribution has been her leadership in designing and administering nursing programs, and with the systematic enhancement in its image and ranking of the College of Nursing, Prairie View has been listed in America’s Best Nursing Schools and Colleges (2015) and NurseJournal. Org (2016): Prairie View A&M University College of Nursing’s LVN-BSN Program was ranked number two (2) and, the Family Nurse Practitioner Program was ranked number four (4) in Texas.
But aside from her stellar experience in nursing leadership and her willingness to take a struggling program into new heights of respected healthcare education, Dr. Betty Adams — a woman who prefers anything but the spotlight — should be recognized as one of our state’s differencemakers, an outstanding academic and also a role model for students who only needed one opportunity and who overcame hurdles and barriers to become successful nurses and citizens.
