Gift funds nursing lecture series honoring Bonnie Bullough

By PAULA WITHERELL
Reporter Contributor

The series will be supported by a $100,000 gift from Vern L. Bullough to honor the memory of his wife and colleague.

The Dr. Bonnie Bullough Endowed Lecture Fund, scheduled to begin in fall 1997, is expected to attract speakers from across the country to address topics of interest to the nursing community.

Vern Bullough said he established the fund as a tribute to his wife's steadfast dedication to the nursing profession and the UB School of Nursing.

"Bonnie devoted her life to building the nursing school's distinctive presence in higher education," noted Bullough, who served as dean of natural and social sciences at Buffalo State College while his wife was a dean at UB. "This lecture series is a way to bring new points of view on many different issues to nursing professionals, students and the community, and to make them aware of the different trends occurring in the profession."

Mecca S. Cranley, dean of the UB nursing school, said the lecture fund will "bring ideas about current issues in the nursing profession to the forefront and will help make prominent leaders in nursing more accessible to the professional nursing community of Western New York."

The Bulloughs, also strong proponents of preserving nursing history, presented a gift to UB in 1991 to establish the Bonnie and Vern Bullough History of Nursing Collection in the UB Health Sciences Library.

Bonnie Bullough, whose nursing career spanned nearly 50 years, headed the UB nursing school from 1980-91 and was a professor on the UB faculty until 1993, when the Bulloughs moved to North Ridge, Calif.

A prolific author and authority on human sexuality, she was certified as a family nurse practitioner and a pediatric nurse practitioner. Bonnie Bullough was inducted as a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing in 1978, and was named National Nurse Practitioner Researcher of the Year in 1992 by the New York State Council of Nurse Practitioners.

She received doctorate and master's degrees in sociology from the University of California, Los Angeles, a master's degree in nursing from UCLA, and a bachelor's degree in nursing from Youngstown University in Ohio.