DISTINGUISHED ALUM: DR. ELEANOR (ELLIE) WEINSTEIN, PhD, RN, FAAN

Dr. Eleanor (Ellie) Saltzer Weinstein, BS ‘66, MN ‘68, has always been at the right place at the right time.

When Ellie graduated magna cum laude with a BS from UCLA, she went straight into the MN program and was honored for academic distinction as the Graduate Student of the year. One of her classmates in the masters program was another distinguished alumna, Sister Callista Roy. Her public health nursing mentor was also a distinguished alumna, Afaf Meleis. When Afaf was pregnant, Dean Lulu Wolf Hassenplug gave Ellie her first amazing opportunity – and in Fall 1968 she became a faculty member at the School of Nursing.

Following a brief move to Philadelphia with her first husband Eugene Saltzer (a dermatologist), they eventually returned to Southern California and settled in Orange County where he opened a practice and Ellie returned to school while also raising her two children Becky and David. In 1979, she earned a PhD from UC Irvine in Social Ecology with a specialization in Health Psychology (there were not PhDs in nursing available at the time). Following graduation, she was offered another great opportunity – and became Assistant Director of Behavioral Science Research in Family Medicine where her job was teaching physicians how to do research. Then she became the Director of Nursing Research at UCI Medical Center, a pioneering role for a hospital nursing service. For 31 years she served as the Nursing and Community Representative to UCI College of Medicine Institutional Review Board.

In 1992, she returned to UCLA one more time to earn a post-doctoral clinical specialization in psych and oncology nursing. Her mentor then was Dr. Gwen Van Servellan. And through the years she kept her ties to UCLA as clinical faculty preceptor for students who lived in Orange County.

With the master’s in psych nursing, she founded Cancer Counseling Services, working primarily with women. She became very involved with the cause of breast cancer, and the early ‘90s, she helped to start the Koman Race for the Cure in Orange County. She closed her practice in 1998 when her first husband passed away. Three and one half years later she married her second husband, Gerald Weinstein, chairman of dermatology at UC Irvine.

“I was so fortunate to have two wonderful husbands who supported my many endeavors,” she said.

When asked about her best achievement, Ellie said there wasn’t just one: citing having her own practice directly helping cancer patients, serving on the IRB at UC Irvine (“it kept me up to date as to what is going on in medicine”), and helping nurses and doctors launch their careers.

But the work she is most proud of was her role as Chair of the Leadership Council of the Program in Nursing Science at UC Irvine. “We started lobbying UC Irvine in the mid-1980s to open a nursing program, but it didn’t happen until 2007 and then as a program, not a school.” Coincidentally, one of the members of the Leadership Council was the late Rose Marie Nesbit, another UCLA Distinguished Alumna. “However we knew that someday the resources would come and we could become a school. When that day came, we wanted the academics to be ready for that.” And, that work paid off when this year UC Irvine was given $40 million to open a School of Nursing in early 2016.

“Ellie is a natural born leader and she has never shied away from any challenge,” said Carol Allen, who was one of her nominators, as well as a classmate.

“You never know what impact you might have,” said Ellie about taking advantage of all the opportunities presented. And it is her “I can do this” attitude toward her career and life is why she was selected as one of our 2016 Distinguished Alumni.