Professor Emerita A. Kay Keiser

 

A bequest from Dr. A. Kay Keiser continues her long-held commitment to Southern and its students.

By Karen Baar


he desire to give epitomized Kay Keiser,” said Dr. William G. Faraclas, professor and chairman of the Department of Public Health, at a memorial service for the Professor Emerita, who died on April 6, 2005. It’s not surprising, then, that her generosity continues after her death, with a bequest she left to the Southern Connecticut State University Foundation. The Dr. A. Kay Keiser Endowed Award will fund two awards, which will be presented annually to the graduating student with the highest grade point average in both the undergraduate and graduate public health programs.

Dr. Keiser, who taught in the Department of Public Health from 1988 to 2005, had a remarkable career. Not only did she hold credentials from the nation’s most elite institutions — an M.P.H. from the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at the Yale University School of Medicine and a Sc.D. in Health Sciences Administration and Health Economics from the Harvard University School of Public Health — she also accomplished much during her impressive career, including receiving a Senior Fulbright Scholar Fellowship, awarded in 1999.


Each year the Department of Public Health provides an opportunity for students to learn about public health in a developing country. Since 1995, the field study has been conducted in Guatemala, the second poorest nation in the Western hemisphere. Professor William Faraclas [right] walks with a Southern student and a Guatemalan woman.
Still, what most characterized Keiser was her commitment to her students and to public education. “Her whole life was education,” says her sister, Marian Keiser (Sister Antoinette of the Bernardine Sisters of St. Francis), who credits this passion to their childhood, and especially to their mother. “We grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania. Our mother, who hadn’t gone past fourth grade, created a competition for learning among the six of us children.”

Before she came to the university, Keiser taught at the Yale Department of Epidemiology and Public Health for 10 years. Yet, recalls Faraclas, “She believed firmly that the students here at Southern were as good as the students at the most prestigious schools. It was just that they needed someone to tell them, or remind them, that that was true.”

She was no stranger to overcoming obstacles on her own career path. “Kay came up in a time when women weren’t offered the same opportunities as men. But she was determined and was not going to be denied,” he adds.

Despite — or perhaps because of — her devotion to her students, she expected a lot from them. Says Sister Antoinette, “She was a very hard teacher; she practiced what I’d call ‘tough love’ with her students.”

Keiser’s classes covered far more than academics. Rather than simply mastering the subject matter, she wanted her students to grow as thinking, active individuals. And although she held them to high standards, she always made sure they knew why. She told students how to dress for class presentations because she was teaching them to be professionals. When she required that they listen to the news, read a weekly news magazine, or listen to National Public Radio — habits many students didn’t have when they first arrived in her class — she was showing them the importance of public health in the broader international context. Says Faraclas, “Even when she was so demanding of her students, she did it in a respectful way. Her message to them was ‘I believe in you and now you must believe in yourself.’ The result was that her students revered and loved her.”

In addition to her impact on countless students, Keiser made significant contributions to both the graduate and undergraduate public health programs at Southern by advocating ways in which they could expand and improve.

She also added a strong, yet moderate, voice to faculty discussions. Faraclas remembers her as someone who was open and honest with her opinions, but always willing to listen to others. “She had the ability to find a path that worked well for everyone. And if there was something that needed to be done, and no one wanted to do it, I could always depend on her.” A case in point: despite “retiring” and becoming Professor Emerita in 2001, Keiser continued to teach several undergraduate courses.

The first gifts from the Dr. A. Kay Keiser Endowed Award will be presented in May 2007. “The awards will keep her name alive in both the undergraduate and graduate programs,” says Faraclas. “That’s especially gratifying, because my life — and those of so many of our students and faculty in both programs — are better because Kay Keiser touched them in a very special way.”