Twenty-two-year-old Judith Feustle was hand-charting a patient’s temperature pulse and restoration with a ballpoint pen and paper, long before computers were incorporated into clinical settings. She wore a white skirt that just reached the top of her ankles, and a scrub cap was pinned to her hair, which was an unwanted reddish color after attempting to dye it blonde.
Twenty-three years before she started Villa Julie’s Bachelor’s in Science Nursing program in 1991, Feustle was a young student at Union Memorial Hospital studying to be a nurse. She graduated in 1971 with a hospital-based diploma.
For women in the early 20th century, their available career choices were limited, two of the most common options being nurse or teacher.
Feustle wanted to do both.
“[Women’s] role was to get married, have kids and raise the next generation. I didn’t do that,” Feustle said.
In order to start teaching, Feustle needed a bachelor’s degree. So, she returned to school at University of Maryland, which had established its School of Nursing in 1889.
Two years later in ‘73, she was hired by Union Memorial as a faculty member, where she worked her way up to eventually becoming director of the hospital’s nursing school in 1980, the same program from which she graduated.
While many universities began awarding Bachelor’s of Science degrees in nursing in the 1960’s, it wasn’t until ‘84 that Feustle started reaching out to nearby colleges, hoping to form a partnership.
“As time progresses, we gotta get it out of the hospitals. We’ve gotta get an education. Nurses are never gonna get respected as a profession if we don’t have degrees like everybody else,” Feustle said.
Feustle and other faculty members of Union Memorial formed a semi-secret committee called the Future Direction of the School, in which they searched for colleges to partner with in offering a higher education to nursing students.
“She just had a great vision of where this was going to go,” Rebecca Diaz, Villa Julie/Union Memorial class of ‘98 said. “She saw the opportunity when nursing schools were merging with bachelor’s programs. She just knew that there had to be something more to Union Memorial.”
The Future Direction of the School reached out to a plethora of colleges in the Baltimore, Maryland area, including Villa Julie College, Western Maryland College (now known as McDaniel College) and Notre Dame of Maryland University.
“The one that stuck was Villa Julie,” Feustle said.
Feustle worked tirelessly alongside Villa Julie faculty, including the academic dean Rose Dawson and president of the college, Carolyn Manuzak to construct a curriculum that merged the clinical-base practices of the hospital to Villa Julie’s traditional four-year education.
“If they had said no, we wouldn’t even be here. They had to support us the whole time,” Feustle said. “They had both been nuns, and they left the order. I think they get the struggles that women went through.”
Meanwhile, Feustle continued to run Union Memorial’s hospital-based diploma program.
“They were crazy years,” Feustle said. “I spent half my time on I-83 driving back and forth between the Villa Julie campus and the Union Memorial Hospital. I had two full-time jobs. Literally, it was my life.”
Despite her hectic schedule, her passion for teaching and helping others was evident in how she interacted with the people around her. Diaz was a student of Feustle who recalls her involvement with both the hospital and the school.
“I think the connections that she’s made with students, with nurses and doctors and just people in the community is just really amazing,” Diaz said.
In 1991, the first students of the Villa Julie College/Union Memorial Hospital Nursing Program were enrolled, and in 1994, they became the first graduating class of the program.
“What changed was that healthcare realized that nurses needed a lot of education,” Feustle said. “Nurses are not dumb. Nurses are not people who are too stupid to be doctors. Nurses are people who want to be nurses, because what we do is very different.”
According to a poll from Gallup News, nurses have consistently been ranked the most trusted profession over the past four years.
Feustle was changing the world of Nursing as she knew it, yet she continued to find ways to improve Nursing education for women.
“[Women] needed to have a different set up,” Feustle said. “We decided we wanted to start an evening weekend program so they could be home with the kids all day, and then they could go to classes.”
In 1999, Feustle created the RN to BSN program and continued to build up to Stevenson’s Master of Science in Nursing in 2010.
In 2018, she started the Judith A Feustle, ScD, RN scholarship to support second-year nursing students, which has been awarded each year to this day. She is now working towards starting an additional scholarship program geared towards upperclassmen.
At last, after a rewarding 33-year long career, Feustle retired from Stevenson University (Villa Julie) in 2022.
“We have a lot in this department, in this school, to owe to her. I don’t think we give her enough; she should have more to [give] tribute to her,” nursing faculty and class of ‘97 Stacey Hittle said.
Looking back, Feustle realizes how far the school has come under her leadership after having graduated over 3,000 bachelor’s and master’s nursing students since the small 14-student class of 1994.
Long after retirement, her legacy has left a lasting impact on not only students of Stevenson University, but on the nursing community.
“Judy is the nursing program,” Diaz said. “She started it, and she continued to support it and help it grow over all those years. She built that school from the very foundation.”
From bedside, to teaching, to accomplishing milestones in the field of education, Feustle continues to actively support nursing students and advocate for women, making a lifelong commitment to serving others.
“She’s iconic,” Hittle said.
