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Marguerite Dixon
BSN 1959, MS 1972, PhD 1982

Dr. Marguerite Dixon started at the UIC College of Nursing before there was even a building to house all the nursing students. “The College was fragmented in the beginning as far as meeting places; we were scattered around different places on campus – up in the towers, and the College of Dentistry. I don’t think anyone took offense, but we were certainly glad when we got the building.”

Dean Emily Cardew (1957-62) talked her into a nursing career. “I was a college graduate already, and married, which was rare among my peers.”

Dixon credits Dean Cardew for getting the UIC Nursing program off the ground. “She got everything through the political system. The program was a novelty, especially to the physicians. For us, it was just such a pride in being a distinct part of the university. It was a new program as far as colleges were concerned.

“The scholarly aspect was always an important part of nursing. The emphasis was that you were to be an inquiring mind, you were to be observant, take notes, and be scholarly as well as clinically astute.”

She fondly recalls her early clinic rotations as a student nurse. “We worked with the City Board of Health and also worked with medical students and faculty in doing home birth deliveries as part of our early obstetrics experience. We were getting calls in the middle of the night all over the city and our techniques used newspaper and hot water.”

She returned to the College of Nursing in the early 1970s to pursue her Master’s degree. She conducted her research on weekends in a lab in the College of Dentistry, where university police would lock her into the building on Saturday nights and let her out on Monday mornings.

“When I was pursuing my master’s degree, somebody asked me, ‘What are you going to do with that degree?’ I said, ‘I’m getting it because I am a nurse.’”

Dixon was a psychiatric nurse for many years, working at the University of Illinois Hospital, and also served as head nurse at the Nurse Psychiatric Institute (NPI). With Helen Grace (Dean 1977-82), she created a day care group in the Robert Taylor Homes in the early 1970s.

Dixon was preparing for retirement when she was asked to be dean of Chicago State University College of Nursing and Allied Health, a role she decided to take on to add to her life experience.

At UIC, she also established the Marguerite Dixon scholarship, which is awarded in her honor each year to African-American PhD students.