SGS GRITS Hall of Fame

GRITS Hall of Fame Member

2023 Inductee

After a series of positions in health care, she arrived at Virginia Tech in the early 1980s, earning her doctorate in Human Development in 1985 and subsequently serving as faculty in that program. While at Virginia Tech, Shirley distinguished herself as both a teacher and a scholar, authoring many articles on aging, health care, and caregiving. As a researcher and a certified gerontological clinical nurse specialist, she became so well regarded throughout the worlds of both nursing and aging that she was recruited by the University of Oklahoma to assume an endowed chair in their School of Nursing, where she continued to publish and profess important ideas shaping family caregiving for elders.

In the late 1990s Shirley returned to the South when she accepted another endowed chair in a school of nursing, this time at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Again, she continued her important work as a nurse-educator and academic leader. During this phase of her career, Shirley also served as a the Pope Eminent Scholar of the Rosalyn Carter Institute for Human Development in Americus, Georgia, enhancing her national reputation as a scholar in gerontology, long-term care, caregiving, and end-of-life care. Shirley from Charlotte to northern Virginia to accept the position of Dean of the College of Health and Human Services at George Mason University, which she held for nearly 8 years. Shirley is not just a talented administrator, researcher, and teacher; she is the sort of leader whom others want to follow, and she embodies the qualities she always has demanded of others, qualities central to SGS. When she retired from Mason in 2012, the College established a fitting award in her honor, reflecting her long-time mantra and standard for herself and her colleagues: it is called the Shirley Travis Habit of Excellence Award.