Every VUSN graduate has exciting things happening in her or his life, both professionally and personally. Class Notes – printed twice a year in the Vanderbilt Nurse Magazine and available online on this page – is an opportunity for you to not only learn what other alumni are doing but also share news about your life. We would love to hear what you've been up to! Please contact us with any updates, or call 615-322-4836. And, when posting on social media please tag us! #VUSN

Look below for news from your classmates as of December 31, 2022. Items received since July 1, 2022 are shown in red font.

Avo Haile Chambers, MSN'72 , of Shelbyville, Tennessee, passed away April 4, 2019. 

Melissa Coate Hauck, BSN'72, and husband, Christie, BA'70, opened a branch of their restaurant, Goozy, in Nashville's Mall at Green Hills in 2019. They launched the first location of Goozy, a restaurant featuring grilled cheese, dessert and wine, in 2014. 

Leslie Jones Higgins, BSN'72, MSN'75, presented "Nursing: Managing Chronic Pain Using the TDH Guidelines," in February 2019 at a Belmont University (Nashville) homecoming event about the opioid crisis and trauma informed care. She was named professor emerita of nursing at Belmont that May. Leslie received the Tennessee Nurses Association Nursing Excellence–Nursing Education Award in October 2015.

Joan Michael King, BSN'72, MSN'75, PhD'84, co-authored "Improving Efficiency within a Trauma Nurse Practitioner Team," published in the Journal of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners in May 2020, and was named professor of nursing, emerita at Vanderbilt University in May 2019. Joan was appointed to the Nurse Practitioner Residency/Fellowship Standards Committee for the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education in 2018. That year, she received the American Association of Heart Failure Nurses Distinguished Member Award and the VUSN Sara K. Archer Excellence in Teaching Award from students in the Adult-Gerontology Acute Care Nurse Practitioner specialty. Joan is on the advisory board of Nursing in Critical Care: The Journal of the British Association of Critical Care Nurses.

Amy Conklin Pettigrew, BSN'72, received the Lulu Wolf Hassenplug Alumni Award for Distinguished Career in Nursing presented by the VUSN Alumni Association during the school's annual awards ceremony in October 2022.

Mary Kay Sauder, MSN'72 , of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, passed away January 26, 2018.  

Susan Steadman Sparks, BSN'72, is on the staff at Heritage Medical Associates in Nashville (2020).

Mary Elizabeth Stephenson Stilson, MSN'72 , of Davenport, Iowa, passed away April 2, 2017.

Claudia Reaves Stoffel, BSN'72, retired in May 2020 from West Kentucky Community and Technical College in Paducah, where she was professor and practical nursing program coordinator. She was honored with a video on the school's website. 

Carolyn Whitaker, BSN'62, MSN'72, was quoted in the Cookeville, Tennessee, Herald-Citizen in November 2016, for a story about nurse practitioners. In 2015, she received the Tennessee Nurses Association Lifetime Achievement Award.