Dr. Mary Ann Hautman Establishes Indigenous Nursing Endowed Scholarship

“UAA offered me an opportunity, late in my nursing career, to come full circle and teach in an academic setting that supports Alaska Native students,” said Mary Ann Hautman, former professor of nursing.

“I never thought I would be involved in philanthropy, but after gaining an in-depth understanding of the program and working with Dr. Tina DeLapp, I decided to establish an endowment to the Recruitment and Retention of Alaska Natives into Nursing (RRANN) as a beneficiary of my modest estate.”

Hautman recalls her father often told her, “No one can take away your education.” Now, by establishing the new Mary Ann Hautman Indigenous Nursing Endowed Scholarship at UAA, she will provide a gift to others that, in her father’s words, “cannot be taken away.”

No stranger to education, Hautman earned a B.S.N. from Mount St. Joseph University, M.S.N. from Wayne State University, a family nurse practitioner certificate from the University of Miami, and a Ph.D. in adult health nursing from UT Austin. She has held teaching positions at the University of Illinois Urbana and the University of San Diego, and she served as a professor of nursing at UAA from 2003 to 2007.

Hautman shaped her education and career based on serving diverse populations. Her first academic nursing position was with Navajo Community College, the first college established by Native Americans for Native Americans.

This experience set her on a career trajectory focusing on the dynamic relationship between connecting culture, health, and illness as well as storytelling of individual and collective experiences. She credits Native American scholar Leslie Marmon Silko for influencing her lifework and her outlook for connecting science to personal stories.

During her early academic years, Hautman worked part-time as a home health nurse, which allowed her to talk with patients in their own spaces. She was involved with the Transcultural Nursing Society whose mission was to foster culturally and ethnically congruent and equitable care.

A prolific speaker and recipient of numerous awards, Hautman taught on transcultural nursing and published 19 papers, including a co-authored paper on RRANN with Tina DeLapp and Mary Sue Anderson.

The Mary Ann Hautman Indigenous Nursing Endowed Scholarship at UAA will provide financial assistance for tuition and other related educational expenses for students seeking a baccalaureate degree in nursing.

“Becoming part of a new crowd of UAA supporters and funders can have a transformative influence on supporting the academic goals of students,” Hautman said.

Hautman lives in Cornville, Arizona, and is professor emerita of the University of San Diego and UAA.

Photo by James Evans / University of Alaska Anchorage

UAA School of Nursing student Phoebe Sayasane monitors her patient's vital signs during a simulated patient care scenario in the Health Sciences Building Simulation Center.