By the time she was 5, Dianna Lipp Rivers knew she wanted to be a teacher. As a teen,
she decided to become a nurse.
Rivers has achieved both of her early aspirations as an associate professor in the JoAnne Gay Dishman Department of Nursing at Lamar. She’s far exceeded them as a veteran healthcare professional whose distinguished career as a registered nurse, nursing administrator and nurse educator has taken her around the world.
“I love to teach nursing so much because of the students’ interest,” she said. “Nursing is a profession that makes a difference. A nurse can help many people, but a professor of nursing can help in the formation of hundreds of nurses who, in turn, will help many thousands of people.”
As the 2008 Distinguished Faculty Lecturer, she earned one of the university’s most prestigious honors. Her lecture, sponsored by ExxonMobil, focused on a topic that has become a passion for Rivers: “Universal Healthcare: Why We Don’t Have It, Why Other Countries Do Have It, and Will We Ever Have it?” She presented the lecture Oct. 27 in the University Theatre.
Rivers brings a lifetime of experience and expertise not only to the lecture hall, but also to the classroom. She’s studied healthcare all over the world. She was a captain in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps during the Vietnam War. Her scholarly research has earned international acclaim.
She, like her brother and two sisters, grew up in Lipp’s Café – a community gathering spot owned by their parents, in the small rural community of Strasburg, N.D., also the hometown of Laurence Welk.
Her dreams were taking shape. “Even when I was 5 years old, we used to do role-playing as teachers. When I got to high school, I thought, ‘Gee, I really would like to be a nurse.’”
She found inspiration in her mother, whose wisdom townspeople often sought. “She wasn’t a doctor or nurse. She was just regarded as a wise woman who knew about first aid. People would come and ask her for advice – some of it health related.”
Rivers earned a scholarship in nursing to Mount Marty College in Yankton, S.D. “I knew by then that this is what I really wanted to be.”
That determination was tested when, during the Vietnam War, she joined the Army Nurse Corps and was assigned to Madigan General Army Hospital in Tacoma, Wash., and Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu. Each had 1,500 beds – and the awesome responsibility not only to save lives of those injured in Vietnam, but also to care for their families. Rivers, who attained the rank of captain, worked as charge nurse at both hospitals and as nurse manager at Tripler.
“It was intense,” Rivers says. “The war was going on, and there was a lot of heartbreak, but there was also a lot of joy in helping people get better.”
Returning from military duty, Rivers worked as a nurse administrator and earned her master’s degree in public health/nursing from the University of Minnesota-Minneapolis. She took advantage of winter sports and enjoyed downhill and cross-country skiing, but, tiring of the ice and snow, sought opportunities in the south.
In 1989, Rivers accepted a position as vice president of nursing and patient care at Baptist Hospital in Beaumont. Coincidentally, a French teacher named Kenneth Rivers came to Lamar University from California the same summer. At the insistence of a doctor at Baptist and his wife, who taught at Lamar, Dianna and Ken met. “We went to lunch, and we’ve been together ever since,” Dianna says. “Ken is a Renaissance man, and he’s a very, very nice person. I had certain criteria for dating, and that was at the top of my list. He’s funny and handsome too.”
The couple married in 1991, and she joined the Lamar faculty in 1996. It was a perfect melding of diverse academic expertise and common interests – one that led to projects and presentations around the world. Ken Rivers is a cinematic scholar, who, as Lamar’s 2005 Distinguished Faculty Lecturer, spoke on “The Meaning of the Movies: 100 Years of Cinema in the U.S. and Around the World.”
“I love movies. It’s one of my hobbies, along with travel,” Dianna said. “Healthcare is pervasive in a lot of movies, reflecting life. We’ve done research and presentations on such topics as medical aspects of movies. With Ken being a professor of French, we go to French movies, which became one of our specialties.”
The couple has attended the Cannes Film Festival, where Ken is a credentialed visitor. Each semester, Dianna joins Ken in hosting a film festival at Lamar, each focusing on a different genre. They have co-conducted study-abroad trips to 10 European countries, providing students the opportunity to learn about healthcare while earning nursing credits. They have visited the great hospitals in Europe – including St. Thomas in London and Hotel Dieu in Paris. In summer 2008, they visited friends in China, adding to Dianna’s research via tours of hospitals and visits with nurses in Shanghai and Hong Kong.
Dianna acquired another hobby – one that evolved into expertise – quite by accident. While working on her doctoral dissertation in Houston, Dianna became a diehard fan of a genre to die for – the television mob series. In a hotel lobby with a fellow student, she was watching a Jackie Kennedy special when her friend talked her into switching to The Sopranos. “I thought, ‘What is this?’ I became really interested and found all kinds of healthcare issues.”
In 2001, Dianna earned the doctorate in public health from the University of Texas-Houston Health Sciences Center School of Public Health. To celebrate, Ken surprised her with a subscription to HBO so she could watch her favorite show. Last year, they learned about a conference on The Sopranos, to be hosted by Fordham university in New York. Each submitted a presentation proposal, and both were accepted.
Dianna focused on healthcare issues that might have confronted the Sopranos, hardly in a position to have group health insurance. “The audience seemed to love it,” Dianna said. New York media covered the session, and The New Yorker singled her out. The conference ended with a bus trip to Sopranos locations in New Jersey.
Rivers has extensively researched the healthcare system in the United States and other nations. She has visited medical sites, historical and current, and conducted interviews with hospital administrators, doctors, nurses, patients and members of the public.
“I have been in a position to see from the inside how our healthcare system works, how it does what it does well and how it falters,” she said.
“In the 21st century, the United States remains the only major industrialized democracy without universal healthcare. Nearly 50 million Americans have no health insurance at all, and many millions more are substantially under-insured.”
The healthcare issue is so important to Rivers because, she said, “It is relevant to all of us. Our health is the most important thing we have. Even though you and I might have great health insurance, people in our own families might not – or might have lost it. You see what happens when you aren’t able to have good preventive care – maybe you haven’t had a physical in years and years. One day, you get very sick, and you could have prevented it.” Nursing News and other healthcare publications carried word of her
lecture, as did alumni publications, prompting emails from colleagues across the country. Among many honors, Rivers earned the College of Arts and Sciences’ Excellence in Teaching Award, a Lamar Research Enhancement Grant and the Texas Nursing Association’s “Dedicated to Caring” Award.
Rivers has cared for patients as a nurse, supervisor and administrator. “As an administrator, you have a broader view of what’s going on in the hospital. That’s what I love about it. Even though you’re not a bedside nurse, you are part of the big picture.”
Seamlessly, Rivers made the transition from hospital hallways to the halls of higher learning – though she maintains her associations with healthcare settings during clinicals and hands-on opportunities for students, such as the Nightingale Experience.
“My Lamar career has enabled me to do both teaching and nursing,” she said. “We have the best nursing students in the country, and it’s wonderful to work with them.”
