During her 34 years in the lab, Mary Haven tested household detergents, fecal fats, trace metals and more than 200 different analytes in blood and body fluids.
Today, the chemist-turned-teacher-turned administrator is poised to guide UNMC’s School of Allied Health Professions (SAHP) into a national leader in distance learning.
“We’re quite close,” said Haven, who has served as associate dean for the past nine years. “Being associate dean is the most wonderful job in the world. We have some really strong programs in allied health, the faculty and staff are dedicated and the students are excited about their careers.”
A champion for allied health, Haven has received the Chancellor’s Gold ‘U’ Award for April for her outstanding performance and service to UNMC. It’s an honor she embraces for the SAHP team. “It’s the faculty, staff and students who do all the things that matter,” she said. “The associate dean hopefully has everyone moving in the same direction.”
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For Haven that includes 10 divisions, 326 students and 32 full-time faculty members, in addition to numerous part-time and volunteer faculty members. There also are 602 clinical sites across the United States, plus a clinical perfusion rotation in London.
Haven, who grew up on a farm near Atkinson, Neb., has been a cheerleader for distance learning. The school’s medical technology’s courses have been available via distance learning since 1990, with radiation therapy following suit in 2001. Plans are to add cytotechnology in 2005, clinical perfusion and radiography in 2006, Haven said.
“It’s important to become known for distance education,” she said, particularly as state funding for education decreases. Small programs won’t survive unless they collaborate with other institutions, she said. “Our goal is to prepare our programs to be the exporters of didactic allied health education.”
Haven is an “outstanding spokesman for UNMC,” who has “procured grant funding to support community outreach programs for diabetes care in Native American communities, directed the development of educational programs for promotion to other countries, and worked to make cultural competency an essential part of the curriculum…She teaches, mentors and promotes those people who work with her and encourages open communication throughout SAHP. If extra time and effort is needed to accomplish a goal, she will do whatever is needed to obtain excellence.”
Haven began her career as an analytical chemist with Tidy House Products Company, a household detergent company later acquired by Pillsbury. From there, she moved to the VA Medical Center and spent six years doing neutron activation analysis, while earning a master’s degree at Creighton University. In 1968, Haven joined UNMC as a chemist in the pathology and microbiology department, where she mentored medical technologists, developed new procedures, assisted with clinical trials on therapeutic drug monitoring of immunosuppressants, and evaluated new automated analytical instruments.
“It was a great time to be in the lab,” she said. “Things were changing so rapidly that in about 20 years, the chemistry field went from manual procedures to automated procedures and from doing a few lab tests daily to thousands.”
Haven continues to teach allied health students at UNMC, where she also played an active role in putting UNMC’s first allied health course on the Web. In addition, she is the primary investigator on a grant that addresses diabetes prevention and management among the Native American population in Winnebago and Macy, Neb.
Haven’s unbridled optimism contributes to SAHP’s success, raising the question — Does she ever have a bad day? “Well, usually not the whole day,” she quips.
Outside the office, Haven enjoys snow skiing, reading, gardening and attending UNMC graduations, which she finds “electric.” She is the mother of three children and grandmother of nine, including five step grandchildren.