Elizabeth "Liz" Allen Ph.D., RN

Dr. Elizabeth “Liz” Allen, Ph.D., RN, was born in 1940 in West Virginia. Due to the death of her mother from tuberculosis, she and her four siblings were raised by their grandmother from an early age in Huntington, WV. She attended Frederick Douglass High until the 11th?grade before transferring to Huntington High, making her one of the first African American students to integrate West Virginia high schools in 1957. After graduating from the St. Mary’s School of Nursing in Huntington, she received her B.S. and M.A. in Psychiatric Nursing in 1965 and 1966, respectively, from Ohio State University. Coming from a family of warriors’ a grandfather and an uncle had served, and both of her brothers were in the Navy, one of them in Vietnam she realized she wanted to serve too. In January 1967, Allen requested frontline duty and after completing Officer Candidate School was sworn in as Captain Allen, U.S. Army. She was first assigned to the remote 12th Evac Hospital at Cu Chi where the constant stream of wounded was a gruesome introduction to the realities of war. That winter, Allen transferred to another field hospital in Pleiku, which would soon come under attack during the Tet Offensive. Donning a helmet and flak jacket, Allen watched as a rocket tore through the roof of an operating room at the hospital. She heroically dashed out into the night, amid the falling bombs to try to save the lives of those caught in the explosions.

In April 1968, Allen completed her tour in Vietnam and then proceeded to serve 14 years in the U.S. Army Reserves. In 1969, she was appointed State Director for Psychiatric Nursing for the South Carolina Department of Mental Health and later went on to become Assistant Professor of Nursing at the University of South Carolina where she received her PhD in 1973. She joined the faculty of the School of Nursing at the University of Michigan in 1976. In addition to her duties as a faculty member, she acted as Director of the Center for Continuing Education for Nurses, a position she held until 1982. In 1985, she served as Acting Director of Minority Affairs at the University. Throughout her professional career, she advocated for veterans, and spoke on veterans’ issues, such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and the treatment of women and African Americans in the military. She was appointed by Governor James Blanchard, in 1987, to the Agent Orange Commission and was twice elected as chair. She continued to serve as a Major in the Active Army Nurse Corps Reserve until 1988. As a professor, she worked to create awareness among her students of the ways in which poverty, race, and social justice can have an impact on the field of nursing. Allen retired from her position as Associate Professor in 2007 and was named Associate Professor Emerita of Nursing by the Regents of the University of Michigan that same year, a role she currently serves.?