September 27, 1931 – February 4, 2023
Eileen (formally Margaret Eileen) Campbell began her career as an Assistant Professor in the UBC School of Nursing in 1966. She initially taught pediatrics, bringing an extensive history of clinical practice in that field, including working at The Maples, an adolescent mental health treatment centre. Over the years, she also developed specialization in the teaching of clinical practice skills, working in often makeshift clinical laboratory spaces in the various buildings in which the School was situated at that time.
In the late 1970s, the School was offered space for all of its components to come together in one location in the new Koerner Pavilion. Eileen was part of the Committee that led the planning for the School of Nursing premises, including the plans for what was at that time a state-of-the-art clinical learning facility known as the Learning Resources Centre (aka LRC). When the new building opened in 1980, Eileen was the LRC’s first Coordinator. Under Eileen’s careful and visionary guidance, the LRC boasted advanced technology (for the time), such as closed-circuit television, so that nursing students could watch procedures demonstrated close-up on camera, and could replay these recordings as they practiced.
Although Eileen left the School in the early 1980s to take up other work in nursing practice, colleagues remembered her as a lovely person and a wonderful educational leader. They knew that she had devoted much of her life to caring for her aging and ill father, and were delighted to learn that she had found love later in her life. Eileen’s Obituary describes her as a “sweet loving woman who spent her life nursing and caring for many people.” It goes on to say that “Eileen was a woman with an open and kind heart and many strangers were blessed by her caring for them. Many times complete strangers stopped her on the street to compliment her on her radiating smile and sparkling eyes that you couldn’t miss! Eileen also had a breadth of knowledge and experience that allowed for endless hours of conversation with many moments of laughter thrown in for good measure.” This seems such a perfect description of the colleague who is so fondly remembered by so many.