Alumni Feature: Janet Bowen, BSN ‘69

Janet Bowen, BSN ’69, had never considered nursing until her senior year of high school. Having grown up in a military family that was stationed in Tokyo, Japan, her family had the rare opportunity to host flight nurses at their home.

“I would overhear their stories about saving lives and traveling the world,” Bowen said.

Then came time for Bowen to pick her alma mater. With a rule enforced by her parents that she must live within 600 miles of where they were stationed, she selected MSU, partially because her grandparents lived in the neighboring East Lansing town of Haslett.

The transition from Tokyo to East Lansing could have been smoother for Janet.

“It was a culture shock to me,” she said. “I was used to a city with subways and trains.”

Nonetheless, she found her stride as a nursing student and made plenty of friends in the residence halls. The nursing experience she gained at MSU allowed Bowen to enter the field of public health nursing at the Ingham County Health Department.

After two years with the county, Bowen pursued the same career in Cook County, Illinois followed by a school nurse practitioner position in Denver, Colorado. She continued her nursing career with several moves across the country and started to gain teaching experience in expectant parenthood, which she did on-and-off for 15 years.  

Bowen then settled in Kaneohe, Hawaii for four years and worked as a nurse in a psychiatric facility, which proved to be a challenge at times, even resulting in a patient assaulting her for the first time.

Also, while in Hawaii, Bowen moved to the North Shore and took on the difficult role of working with the neglected and abused children of military families. Along with the outreach department, a social worker would assist her in caring for these children as well as abused spouses. Bowen believes that a causing factor of child neglect and abuse in the Army had to do with the high prices and low wages in the state.

“People would go into the Army as privates and need to collect food stamps,” she said. “They didn’t have the proper means to live.”

Bowen returned to the mainland and lived in Williamston, Michigan. She continued to work in public health, at the Ingham County Health Department in maternal health. Her final duty in public health was very impactful as Bowen worked in the Lead Poisoning Prevention Program.

“The goal is to have every child in Michigan screened for lead,” she said. “We visited children that were suffering from lead poising and instructed their parents on how to treat them.”

With over 50 years of nursing under her belt, Bowen has a wealth of knowledge and often emphasizes the importance of being on a team.

“I was always able to work well with others,” Bowen said. “I wasn’t a person that always needed to be at the top of the totem pole to be effective.”

Bowen’s willingness to learn at all stages of her career are the hallmarks of a Spartan Nurse. The MSU College of Nursing would like to thank her for her contributions to the health care field, which touched all across the United States.