Joan Fiss Bishop
Joan Fiss Bishop (1909-1981) was director of career services at Wellesley College from 1944 to 1975. From 1975 to 1978, she was director of the Office of Career Services at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Oshkosh State College in 1931 and her master’s degree from Radcliffe College in 1935. Joan was awarded the Meritorious Service Award in 1959 from the U.S. Civil Service Commission, the Distinguished Public Citizen Award from the Boston Chapter of the American Society for Public Administration in 1966, and the Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh in 1974. She was elected to the national council of the American Society for Public Administration in 1970 and served as chairman of the society’s Task Force on Women in Public Administration. She had also served as president of the National Council of Guidance and Personnel Associations.
Joan established the Katherine MacKinnon Fiss Quality Nursing Award in honor of her mother. The award is given to undergraduate and graduate nursing students attending University of Wisconsin Oshkosh.
Katherine MacKinnon was born in 1872 in Mount Pleasant, Michigan. Her family was large, and she lost several family members to typhoid which may have been the reason she decided to pursue a career in nursing. In that day and age, young ladies did not venture far from home to pursue a career, but Katherine went to Chicago to the best nursing school she could find. She graduated from Mercy School of Nursing in June 1897. Following her graduation, Katherine joined the military as a nurse in October 1898 to serve in the Spanish-American War.
Katherine understood and valued the importance of both practical experience and education about the science of nursing. After the war, she moved to New York to work as Supervisor of Nurses at St. Jude Hospital, Long Island, New York. By 1900, Katherine had moved to Dubuque, Iowa to take the position of director of the newly established school of nursing at Mercy Hospital. She was also the first Vice President of the Graduate Nurses’ Association of Dubuque, which was organized in 1902. The first nurses’ cap there was based on her cap from Mercy in Chicago.
Family lore has it that it was in Dubuque where she again met Charles Ralph Fiss, a veteran of the Spanish American War who was invalided by malaria and typhoid fever until 1903. Katherine and Charles married in 1908, and she moved to his hometown, Oshkosh, Wisconsin. There she became an active member of the community as a member of St. Peter’s Church, the Aquinas Club, the 20th Century Club, United Spanish War Veterans, American Legion Auxiliary, and Mercy Hospital Auxiliary. Mary and her husband raised two children, Charles J. Fiss and Joan Fiss Bishop, both of whom made significant contributions to their communities.
Katherine’s legacy has been important for nursing education. By the turn of the twentieth century in Chicago, the Sisters of Mercy with the Mercy School of Nursing had determined that they would establish a college for women. This evolved into Saint Xavier College School of Nursing which would launch the first integrated baccalaureate nursing program in Illinois in 1935. The Mercy School of Nursing in Dubuque formed partnerships with at least two colleges to offer credits for associate or baccalaureate degrees. The School continued to graduate students until 1973.