Eileen J. Porter
Professor of nursing
Columbia, Mo.
An award-winning, prolific researcher, Eileen J. Porter studies the health-related experiences of older women who live at home alone. Her original approach to descriptive phenomenology is attracting national attention in a variety of disciplines. Her research has been funded by two institutes of the National Institutes of Health: the National Institute of Nursing Research and the National Institute on Aging. She has earned many awards, including the Outstanding Advanced Qualitative Researcher Award from the Midwest Nursing Research Society in 2003 and the Faculty Award for Excellence in Research from the MU Sinclair School of Nursing in 1998. Porter was elected a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America in 2006. After joining the nursing faculty in 1995, she was appointed Director of the PhD Program in Nursing. Porter has served on numerous key campus committees. A former Vice-Chair of the Faculty Council, she currently serves on the Campus Promotion and Tenure Advisory Committee and the Graduate Faculty Senate. A founding member of the Nightingale Society and a member of the Jefferson Club, she initiated a fund to support doctoral students’ scholarly presentations at professional meetings. Porter is married to Dale Veerhusen and has a son, Spencer Jones.