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Allison Amend Vorderstrasse ’02MSN, ’06DNSC

A half dozen years ago, if you had asked Allison Amend Vorderstrasse if she would ever become the dean of a nursing school, “I would have said no,” she says. But some of her colleagues and mentors began prompting her to think about the possibility. “Sometimes other people see potential for your career before you do,” she told me. The idea took hold and grew roots. In 2020, her “no” became a “yes”: she accepted a job as dean of the College of Nursing at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

There were seeds like this throughout her career: planted by others, then brought to fruition. During one of her final courses as a nursing major in college, the professor announced to the auditorium—with great confidence—that everybody in attendance would one day go to graduate school. Whether or not all her peers followed his pronouncement, Vorderstrasse eventually did, attending Yale to earn her master’s. While at Yale, a mentor encouraged her to pursue her doctorate. Vorderstrasse demurred. Then, she pursued it.
 
With her doctor of nursing science degree, Vorder-strasse moved through a series of university jobs, first at Marymount University in Arlington, Virginia, then at Duke University, and finally at New York University, where she held her first administrative position as the director of the PhD program. From there she became dean at Amherst.

“The more I thought about it, the more I started to realize if people like me didn’t step into these roles, then who would?” Vorderstrasse says. The headaches of the job, the unwinnable compromises and negotiations, are what people most often see. But these negatives aren’t everything that exists for a dean. Just as mentors once encouraged Vorderstrasse on her path, she is now in a position to do the same for others. “This is a role in which you get to advocate and provide resources for work that you know is important.”