Nontraditional Minneapolis Campus Students

Bob Kirk '98, in his late sixties, is one of the most nontraditional St. Catherine alum you'll ever meet. When he was in his fifties, with a PhD in chemistry and a lucrative job as a 3M research scientist, he went back to school to prepare for a retirement career as a nurse. He urges other people to do the same. "Nursing is the perfect retirement career," he says. "You work only when you want, and the volunteer opportunities are terrific!"

"I had my health and energy, and the stock market had been treating me well,' explains Kirk, who has three children and seven grandchildren. "I was looking for something that I could do to give back the good things that had been given to me." He's done that in spades. After retirement, he worked at Bethesda Hospital for five years, volunteered for three weeks at Ground Zero after 9/11 and three weeks in new Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, then more time helping homeless after a local apartment fire and in the Pine Ridge Reservation Clinic with the Lakota people. "You have to retire to something," said Kirk, "not from something." Most recently he's been writing simple, fun, healthy-eating cookbooks for Lakota, Dakota, and Ojibwe youth. He's also a candidate for the St. Catherine Alumnae/i Association Board, where he can voice to some of the perspectives of Minneapolis Campus alums, retirement-age alums, and male alums.

Able to Work Full-Time As Chemist While Attending

When he first began looking into nursing programs at nearby community colleges, he discovered that the classes and clinicals were all scheduled during the day, whereas he wanted to keep working full-time while he went to school. Only at St. Catherine could he do both.

"Actually, when you're in a technical field, you have to be learning new things all the time, so going back to school wasn't really a challenge," says Kirk, "but it wasn't a piece of cake either."

For four years, Kirk went to school nights and weekends at CSC's Minneapolis campus, graduating with an AS degree in 1998. Following his retirement from 3M in 1999, he spent five years working part-time at the Bethesda Hospital in Saint Paul, now the largest rehabilitation hospital in the region.

Sees CSC as Friendly and Accommodating

Going back to school can be a bit humbling, he admits. "You have to be willing to accept advice from people who might be the age of your grandchildren," he says. "If that bothers you, you probably don't want to start over.'

But the rewards are worth it, Bob feels, especially since the Minneapolis Campus Health Program makes it welcoming. "It was as friendly and accommodating as any college I've ever attended," he says, and that includes Yale.

A Valuable National Volunteer

Then disasters of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina hit the nation, and he was able to respond to both immediately. After resigning from his job at Bethesda, he began now collaborating with a Native American colleague to provide information to medicine men working with diabetes patients on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

He and Richard Iron Cloud, director of the Porcupine Clinic Special Diabetes Prevention Project, co-authored a pamphlet on how Lakota patients with diabetes could safely engage in some of the more medically challenging traditional spiritual practices, such as sweat lodges and Sun Dances. Kirk then worked with member from the Dakota and Ojibwe communities to make similar pamphlets. These health education materials have been printed and distributed by the State of Minnesota for its American Indian health clinics.

From this, Kirk's interest proceeded to diabetes and obesity prevention, and he collaborated with other tribal members for kids cookbooks. Hi "Unci Betty's Kids Cookbook" for Lakota Youth include: Wonderful Wojapi (grape sauce with fruit), Wasna Toast (jerky-fruit bread spread), Fruit Smoothie, Healthy Indian Tacos, and Pickled Tin'psila (wild turnips). These are some of the more traditional type foods included in this simple cookbook, oriented for kids to make cheaply on their own (often with the microwave or blender) for great after-school snacks or meals.

Kirk is proud that his CSC nursing degree has made him so flexible and useful, able to plug into where he is needed and where his creativity leads him. "I'm out where the action is," he told Newsreporter Bob Gilbert, "and it's a lot of fun."