For immediate release: Sept. 26, 2008

BLOOMSBURG — Educator, practitioner and community activist Catherine Alicia Georges will be the keynote speaker for the ninth annual Faust Memorial Nurse Lectureship at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania. Her address, “Assuring Health Equity: Nursing’s Role,” will be presented on Wednesday, Oct. 8, at 7 p.m. in the Kehr Union Ballroom and is open to the public and free of charge.

Georges, chairperson of the nursing department at Lehman College of the City University of New York, has devoted her career to eliminating disparities and improving the health of minorities and the disadvantaged. She has spoken on nursing and health care issues throughout the United States, Africa, South America, Europe and the Caribbean.

Georges was the fifth president of the National Black Nurses Association and now serves as the president of the National Black Nurses Foundation and the Commission on Graduates of Foreign Nursing Schools (CGFNS). She is a member of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service Advisory Council on Nursing Education and Practice and has served on the New York State Governor’s Health Care Advisory Board.

Georges has published articles in journals such as Image, Nursing Leadership Forum, Nursing Administration Quarterly and Ethnicity & Disease and the Journal of the National Black Nurses Association. She holds licenses to practice nursing in New York, New Jersey and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The Faust Memorial Lectureship is supported by the Eleanor Sharadin Faust ’38 Endowment. Faust was a 1938 graduate of Bloomsburg Teachers College.

Bloomsburg University is one of 14 universities in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education. The university serves approximately 8,000 students, offering comprehensive programs of study in the colleges of Professional Studies, Business, Liberal Arts and Science and Technology.