Celebrating a Legacy of Leadership

New Endowed Chair Named To Honor Dr. Mary Jo Kreitzer.  

March 10, 2023
Katie Dohman

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Dr. Mary Jo Kreitzer founded the Earl E. Bakken Center for Spirituality & Healing, she is currently its director, and now her name will be attached to the Center’s future, owing to the latest and well-deserved accolade: the Mary Jo Kreitzer Chair for Health and Wellbeing Leadership, an endowed chair that will help fund and advance the Center’s work.

When the Center received the donor legacy gift, the interest of which will help fund innovation and will fuel innovation and insure sustainability, the question arose: How—or maybe more accurately, who—to name the chair? All it took was a quick conversation amongst the leadership team: Clearly, the only option was Mary Jo Kreitzer.

Honoring a Pioneer

“She is an internationally recognized pioneer in the field. There’s no question that the Bakken Center would not be flourishing as it is today without her leadership,” Pamela Cherry, administrative director at the Center, says. “Not surprisingly, the only person who needed convincing was Mary Jo.”

Mary Jo is an incredibly strategic thinker. We were one of the first institutions to receive a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to implement curriculum in integrative therapies and healing practices; that put us in a league of premier institutions working in this area. However, we were one of the only, if not the only, truly interprofessional/ interdisciplinary program” Cherry continues. “Over the last 20 years, many of those organizations have contracted while the Center continues to grow. Through Mary Jo’s insight, strategic direction, and deep commitment to interdisciplinary work, the Center has emerged as one of the leading innovators in the field.”

“I truly feel really honored and a deep sense of gratitude,” says Kreitzer of the recent naming. Endowed chairs provide a corpus of money—a permanent source of funding—that can use the interest to support the Center, helping with future sustainability. When they get established, it’s a sign of how important that area is. “In general, endowed chairs are one of the best ways to assure long term growth and sustainability,” she says, acknowledging that the honor recognizes her role in both being the founder and the director of the Bakken Center for nearly 30 years, and the leadership she’s shown on a global scale for integrative health and wellbeing.

Leading and Widening Influence

Dr. Connie Delaney, Dean of the University’s School of Nursing, says that Kreitzer’s leadership was one of the major reasons she was attracted to the University when she was hired. “It was absolutely cutting edge, for a public university to be deeply engaged in this space … the welcoming breadth of what health is about,” she says.

After founding the Center, Kreitzer has helmed it for three decades and counting, overseeing nearly 23 consecutive years of National Institutes for Health-funded projects, 2 million global visitors annually to the Taking Charge of Your Health & Wellbeing website, first-of-its-kind curricula, and innovative certifications. Penny George calls her an “icon” who has advanced the whole field of integrative health and pulled in more than $20 million from the NIH in funding.

Delaney says Kreitzer was deserving of the honor for myriad reasons. “Mary Jo is unwavering in her identifying, exploring, and cultivating all types of relationships,” she says. “One is the area of where health and healing can be advanced: in corporate systems, health, academic systems, community endeavors. She is always very astute and sensitive and open to exploring where there’s a need for integrative health and healing, mindfulness, and wellbeing.”

Secondly, Delaney says, she cultivates the people who bring teaching expertise to the Center, which ripples into an even wider influence: cultivating the field.

And third, Delaney says, is that “from local to international perspectives, she is a strong voice, and one might say activist, innovator in expanding the acceptance and the growth of this area of integrative health and healing.”

A Worldwide Contribution

Speaking on her international influence at the April 6 celebration event, Professor Michael Shannon, Dean, Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery at RCSI Ireland, called her life’s work and the naming of this chair “a remarkable achievement.”

“Your contribution to integrative health care, nursing science, and clinical practice has been outstanding and I know personally in Ireland we are very, very proud of you and thank you for all of your guidance,” he said. “Not just from an Irish context or American context, but worldwide context where your contributions have been absolutely phenomenal.”

Dr. Sian Cotton at the University of Cincinnati has known Kreitzer since 2009 when she joined the Academic Consortium for Integrative Health and Medicine. “She’s a colleague, friend, and advisor,” Cotton said in her remarks at the celebration event. “I tell people, ‘I want to be Mary Jo Kreitzer when I grow up.’ There’s nobody better for me to model. I can’t imagine doing the work of integrative health without her.”

Investing in Growth and Sustainability

Feel the power of philanthropy by considering a donation to strengthen the Center Strategic Innovation Fund. Help us respond to exciting new opportunities, bolster transformational learning experiences and strategic innovation. To make a gift of any size, visit z.umn.edu/CSHgive

Categories: Leadership

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