An Alabama Nurse's Story

Walden, Gayle

Debbie Faulk: A Life Examined

Dr. Debbie Faulk, nursing professor, has come a long way"from nobody to somebody," she says. "To believe it, I sometimes have to pinch myself." "Where you came from influences where you get to in life," says Faulk.

Getting to where she is now, with no fewer than seven academic and professional titles following her name, was a long struggle, but also a labor of love.

"I grew up in a dysfunctional family," Faulk declares. "My father was killed before I was born," she adds. "My mother was 19 when my sister Brenda was born and 21 when I was born, and her husband was dead. She had a high school education, and that was it. What could she do?

The family moved around a lot and wound up in New Brockton, Alabama, a small town in Coffee County. It was not until she reached high school and make cheerleader that Faulk began to believe in herself. "It did so much for my self-esteem. I was somebody there."

As a teen, Faulk read repeatedly a series of books about Clara Barton, who founded the American Red Cross. They inspired her to follow her lifelong dream of becoming a nurse.

With no one to guide her and no resources, she managed to investigate nursing education on her own and she enrolled in the LPN program at Sparks Technical School in Eufaula, Alabama, and said to herself, "OK, I learning to be a nurse!"

As an LPN, Faulk went to work at Barbour County Hospital (which became Brookwood Medical Center) in Eufaula. After a year, she was tapped for the new critical care unit there. She learned then that an RN could do things an LPN couldn't. She decided then and there she would go back to school to become a registered nurse.

The closest school with such a program was Wallace Community College in Dothan. It took Faulk three years, attending part time and making the hundred mile round trip five days a week, but the effort paid off. She returned to Brookwood and in 1978 became supervisor of the ICU/CCU unit, a position she held until 1982.

During that time, she married Gordon Faulk, the hospital administrator. "Gordon has been my role model," she explains with a huge smile. "He's so intelligent and articulate. In my adult life he's the person who's influenced me the most."

In 1982 Brookwood transferred him to Rock Hill, S.C., a town 10 miles south of the North Carolina border where she found a job as assistant director at Rock Hill Convalescent Center.

"I learned more from those elderly people about life and about caring. I loved the geriatric population, and I realized I liked management."

Never one to let grass grow under her feet, Faulk studied and took the test to become a licensed nursing home administrator, then moved into the director position at the center and later at another nursing home in the area.

After five years, the couple moved back to Alabama, where Gordon took a position as hospital administrator in Prattville. At that time Dr. Sharon Parley, then associate professor of nursing at AUM, was looking for a project nurse for the W.K. Kellogg Foundation grant she'd just received.

Faulk applied for the position, won it, and worked for nine years on three successive Kellogg grant projects in Wilcox and Lowndes counties.

The projects provided a broad range of services to the residents of Alabama's two poorest counties, including health care, housing rehabilitation, the construction of water systems, job skills and leadership training, the development of school-based health and family resource centers, and tutoring and enrichment programs for children.

"When we left there," says Faulk, "we left people with the ability to get jobs and take care of themselves." The projects "made a difference forever in their lives. The best thing about the Kellogg projects was that we weren't giving people a handout. We were empowering them. And I believe we did that."

Faulk's role as a project nurse brought her into contact with AUM's nursing faculty. With their encouragement, she applied and was accepted into the RN to BSN program. From the very first day of class, she knew she wanted to be like them: She wanted to teach. "There was never any doubt," she says.

Faulk needed a master's to teach nursing, and after acquiring the BSN, she entered the Master of Science in Nursing program at Troy State University and earned her degree in 1996.

A shining memory is an evening shortly thereafter when Sharon Parley told her she going to be on the faculty at AUM.

The next year Faulk completed postmaster's work in primary care at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, gaining family nurse practitioner certification.

That still wasn't enough for her. She wanted a doctorate.

"The BSN and MSN were for my career," she says. "The PhD was for me." She grit her teeth and studied for the Graduate Record Exam, fighting against her old fear of math.

She called on Dr. Joan Powell in AUM's Mathematics Department to tutor her. "Believe me, I struggled. I suffered," she says. However, she succeeded in getting into the program she wanted-the joint Auburn-AUM doctorate in public administration and public policy.

Faulk chose as her committee chair Dr. Tom Wilson in AUM's Department of Political Science and Public Administration.

"The very first class I took was Dr. Wilson's, and I sat there in awe because he was so knowledgeable." She asked him if he though she could succeed in the program. "It was the poor self-esteem thing again," she says. "But at the end of the course, he wrote on my paper, 'You can do this.'And I never looked back." Faulk loved every class: "I couldn't get enough. I was learning so much."

Wilson encouraged her and would send her notes saying "Persevere." With this support, she finished the dissertation process, the written comprehensive exams, and the oral exam.

In May 2003, when Faulk walked across the dais to receive her second AUM degree, her friend and mentor Tom Wilson was there to present her with the doctoral hood.

By that time, she already had an impressive record of research, published articles and presentations.

Two months later, Faulk joined Dr. Mona Ternus, a former colleague in the School of Nursing, in presenting "Health Policy: Local to Global Perspectives," based on their individual doctoral research, at the prestigious International Nursing Research Congress in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands.

"With my PhD, I've become the political expert here in the School of Nursing," says Faulk. Her goal is to teach students that political astuteness is a skill as important as any other they will learn.

As proof of their regard for Faulk, her AUM nursing students selected her for the Irma B. Moore Faculty Excellence Award in 2005. It's the second time she has received this honor.

I can't end this story without telling you what Faulk has embarked upon now: learning to play the fiddle. Her father, whom she never had the chance to know, played the fiddle in a band. Just before his death, he'd been selected to play with Hank Williams-an opportunity he didn't live to enjoy.

Faulk uses his 80-year-old fiddle. She says she wants to learn enough to be able to play for her family-her husband, three children, and two grandbabies.

But I think she will also be playing for her dad.

Adapted from a story in AUM Today by GayIe Walden. Reprinted with permission from Gayle Walden and Debbie Faulk.

Copyright Alabama State Nurses' Association Jun-Aug 2006
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