Building a Better Wyoming Award: Maxine Chisholm

September 16, 2020
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Maxine Chisholm (Image by Kelly Coulter Photography)

Dedicated alumna paved the way for Wyoming nurse practitioners

Maxine Chisholm (B.S. ’80, M.S. ’82) is a pioneer. Though she’s now retired, Chisholm was instrumental in introducing the state of Wyoming to nurse practitioners—a relatively new addition to the medical landscape but one that is now integral.

In recognition of her contributions to the state, her making a difference in the lives of Wyoming residents, and being a source of UW strength and pride, Chisholm received this year’s Building a Better Wyoming Award from the University of Wyoming Alumni Association.

“It’s nice to get an award like this, but the university has given me so much,” she says. “Had I not gone through the education at the university, I would never have been able to continue professionally the way I have.”

Chisholm was a nontraditional student, enrolling at UW as a married mother of three. Chisholm first earned a four-year degree before taking advantage of a brand new nurse practitioner master’s program launched by the State Legislature to address a shortage of rural medical professionals.

Chisholm was the program’s first ever graduate and began working at a nursing home, helping geriatric patients to reduce their medications.

“That’s where I probably learned more about Wyoming—through these pioneer residents who were in the nursing home, who had such vast information on their lives and the values that Wyoming has,” Chisholm says. “The project at the nursing home was supposed to last for six months, and I actually stayed for 10 years. I loved it.”

Chisholm worked with UW faculty to write articles related to her work at the nursing home, eventually becoming an instructor herself at the university. A trailblazer in her specialty, Chisholm was appointed to the State Board of Nursing by Gov. Mike Sullivan, and later elected to the Ivinson Memorial Hospital Board of Trustees, serving as each body’s first nurse practitioner.

“I was told that I was the first full-time geriatric nurse practitioner in long-term care in the state,” she says. “I felt like a pioneer.”

Chisholm and her husband, Rod, have long been avid supporters of UW and members of the Cowboy Joe Club. Retired to Mesquite, Nev., the Chisholms live in a community with no shortage of Laramie ex-pats.

“Wyoming has not left us,” she says. “We just left Wyoming and brought it with us.”

 

 

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