Ruth Ann Siegel Belknap

Bio info

Grounding

Raised on a small grain farm in Ohio. I could drive a tractor before I was old enough to drive a car. Hours in a field, before tractors had cabs and radios, was my earliest meditative experience. Gardening is what everyone I knew did. Canning, freezing, pickling we learned from mom and grandma. Pulling weeds, picking beans, shelling peas…meditative work.

Journey

I studied biology at Heidelberg College, liberal arts college in Tiffin, Ohio. I am a first generation college student. College was a transformative experience. Required courses were varied and covered topics far a field of biology. I was actually surprised the day I graduated, I stumbled through my first two years, just beginning to understand what it meant to be a scholar and it was over.

Path forward

After two years of jobs unrelated to my degree, I decided to become a registered nurse. Through and ADN program I became and RN which led to a BSN with much better GPA than I had accomplished in my first degree.

I earned a master’s degree in Nursing from Medical College of Ohio and a PhD in Nursing from Wayne State University in Detroit.

At heart I am a care-giver, an academic, a farmer and a nature lover, in no particular order.