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As a Doctor of Nursing Science, Family Nurse Practitioner, and Certified Nurse-Midwife, Dr. Pat Caudle was educated and prepared for most anything during her career as a nurse practitioner, full scope nurse-midwife, and instructor. But she wasn’t prepared for the call she received informing her that she was selected to be inducted into the Frontier Nursing University Alumni Hall of Fame.

“My first reaction was, ‘Golly, why pick me?’” Dr. Caudle said “Of all the graduates of Frontier… I mean, my gosh, look at the stars you have. Fabulous people. Why me?”

The answer to that question is woven through the fabric of Dr. Caudles’ journey in nursing and as a faculty member at Frontier.

Dr. Caudle grew up in Ballinger, Texas. During her senior year of high school, she took a career test that suggested she should become a teacher or a nurse. She chose nursing and took a job as a nurse’s aide right after graduating and soon began training as a nurse at a diploma school.

“It’s not like going to college,” she said. “It’s an apprentice-like program, on-the-job training.”

She graduated second in her class from Shannon West Texas Memorial Hospital of Nursing in San Angelo, Texas, in 1968. She went on to attend Texas Christian University where she earned her BSN.

She served as a nurse in the U.S. Air Force from 1969-71, beginning as a second lieutenant and finishing as first lieutenant. Shortly after she was honorably discharged from the Air Force, the first of her two sons was born in an Air Force hospital. After her second son was born, she earned her master’s degree at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) and went on to teach at the University of Louisiana in Alexandria while her husband worked for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. She also taught at Northwestern in Shreveport, Louisiana.

Her interest in women’s healthcare led her to become a family nurse practitioner focused on women’s health, and she became certified in 1981.

“We were blessed with a move to California in 1985, and I was able to go to the University of San Diego for my doctorate in nursing science,” Dr. Caudle said. “We were there for six years and then came back to Arkansas where we had property in Heber Springs. While in the doctoral program I took a history research course, and my focus was on midwifery because of a long-held interest in the profession. To become a nurse-midwife in California, I would have had to move or commute 300 or 400 miles because there was not a school in San Diego. When I got back to Arkansas, I discovered Frontier’s Community-based Nurse-midwifery Education Program (CNEP) through a colleague of mine, Joni Yarnell, who was in Class 1 of CNEP. She served as my preceptor. I was 48 years old and already had my doctorate when I started CNEP (Class 9) and I was 50 when I finished.”

But her time at Frontier had only just begun. Upon an invitation from former FNU Dean and President Dr. Susan Stone, Dr. Caudle joined the Frontier faculty in May 2000. She taught at Frontier for 18 years before retiring at the age of 71.

Dr. Caudle was beloved and respected as an instructor. She was a six-time recipient of a Student Choice Award (2002, 2004, 2006, 2010, 2013, and 2015) recognizing the students’ favorite instructors. One of her many former students is current FNU President Dr. Brooke A. Flinders.

“Pat was an incredible educator who supported and inspired us as students as we were beginning our journeys at Frontier,” Dr. Flinders said. “I’ll never forget Pat’s ability to translate pathophysiology content so that I felt capable and confident in learning it. I remember calling her before taking my proctored exams — not to review detailed course material, but to hear her voice and her encouragement that I could do it. Pat washed my hands at Wendover as a symbolic welcome into the midwifery community. Pat encouraged me at an American College of Nurse-Midwives (ACNM) conference to come back to Frontier to complete my DNP. Pat welcomed me to Frontier when I came back to FNU to serve as President. She has been such an influence on me throughout my growth as a practitioner, educator, and nurse leader.”

“I enjoyed every minute of it,” Dr. Caudle said of her time as an FNU instructor. “The first two years I was in Hyden and caught babies there in the hospital. When the hospital decided not to have midwifery anymore, we went to Manchester and caught babies there. The last birth I attended was in June 2002. I moved back to Arkansas in November 2002 because my husband had developed heart problems. From then on, I went back and forth to Hyden for the Bounds. Each time it was like coming home.”

Frontier Bound is an immersive on-campus experience for new FNU students. Students later return to campus for Clinical Bound, which is a hands-on learning experience that prepares them for their clinical practicum.

In 2024, Dr. Caudle came “home” again, visiting Frontier’s former campus in Hyden.

“I went to Hyden because it marked the 30th year since I rode that little yellow school bus up the hill to go to school,” Dr. Caudle said. She also visited the new home of FNU at the Versailles campus in May of 2025, marking the 25th anniversary of her hire date as an FNU faculty member.

Dr. Caudle’s contributions to the professions of nursing, midwifery, and education are enduring. She has shared her extensive knowledge and passion for the nursing profession with countless students across the country and the globe, authoring chapters in medical-surgical, prenatal-postnatal, and pharmacology books. She also served on the American Midwifery Certification Board for seven years, including two years as secretary.

She continues to give back to the profession in general and to Frontier in particular as a donor and supporter.

“Frontier was very good to me,” she said. “I support Frontier because of their mission and what they are trying to do, in regards particularly to helping women of color and women of other languages and cultures to achieve midwifery. I think that’s a very important goal and I’m pleased to be able to help. And I support Frontier because I want to see more midwives and family nurse practitioners in this country.”

Dr. Kerri Schuiling, PhD, NP emeritus, CNM (ret), FACNM, FAAN, was introduced to nursing at an early age. She was close to her maternal grandmother, who was a nurse and a social worker. Dr. Schuiling recalls her grandmother talking about caring for area families, particularly those living in poverty. She always spoke about the importance of supporting families and how by doing so it made the world a better place.

“As long as I can remember, I always wanted to be a nurse,” Dr. Schuiling said. “Of course, I also devoured the Cherry Ames series which helped fuel my desire to go into nursing. However, it was Life Magazine’s April 1965 issue: Drama of Life Before Birth that sparked my fascination with reproductive physiology which later evolved into a passion for caring for families during birth.”

Dr. Schuiling earned a baccalaureate degree from Northern Michigan University and began working in labor and delivery in a small hospital in Petoskey, Michigan. She continued to advance her education, becoming a family planning nurse practitioner in the 1970s, followed by a master’s degree in maternity nursing from Wayne State University in 1980 and a PhD in Nursing from the University of Michigan in 2003.

The occupation of nurse practitioner was still relatively new in the1 970s, in fact, at the time there wasn’t even a certification process for the role. Dr. Schuiling was just the third nurse practitioner to work in western Michigan. When the certification process was developed, Dr. Schuiling became one of the very early practitioners to take the examination and become a certified NP. Interestingly, although Dr. Schuiling enjoyed her role as a nurse practitioner, her ultimate goal was to become a nurse-midwife. While she had never had the opportunity of working with a nurse-midwife, she had read Wide Neighborhoods and knew this was her true professional calling. Unfortunately, many midwifery education programs were closing at the time due to the malpractice crisis, and Dr. Schuiling was forced to wait to continue her education.

In 1989 while browsing the Childbirth Graphics catalogue, she came across an ad for an at-distance midwifery education program. Dr. Schuiling says she immediately called the number provided in the ad. Fellow Frontier Nursing University Alumni Hall of Fame inductee Kitty Ernest was launching Frontier’s Community-based Nurse-midwifery Education Program (CNEP). When Dr. Schuiling called the number, Kitty herself picked up the phone.

“I had no idea who Kitty Ernst was at the time, if you can believe that!” Dr. Schuiling said. “Kitty said I could get into the program if I could find a place to do the clinical portion of the program where I would be mentored by midwives. I was in an OBGYN practice with physicians at the time who were fully supportive of my becoming a nurse-midwife and continuing to work in the practice, and they recommended a women’s center in Battle Creek, Michigan, that employed midwives as a possibility for clinical education. When I contacted the Battle Creek clinic, the midwives, without hesitation, agreed to take me as a student during my clinical rotation. Frankly, they were absolutely floored when I told them Kitty Ernst was running the program. They kept asking me if I was sure it was really THE Kitty Ernst! I was admitted to the first class of CNEP and the rest is history.”

After graduating in the first CNEP class in 1991, Dr. Schuiling continued to work in the same OBGYN practice and at the same time, began teaching women’s gynecologic health for CNEP. “I had been asked to teach the gynecology content because of my expertise in practice and experience teaching the content for other universities. At the time, GYN was a relatively new core competency in midwifery education, therefore my background and experience helped in revising the course and assuring GYN standards were met.”

When Dr. Schuiling graduated from CNEP, Grand Rapids had no certified nursemidwives credentialed in the area hospitals, so she had to work with the hospital to not only become credentialed, but to assist in the development of credentialing criteria for midwives. She became the first credentialed nurse-midwife at was then known as Butterworth Hospital (now known as Corewell Health West Michigan) in Grand Rapids.

“A couple of years later I moved to Boulder, Colorado. I began practicing with a group of physicians who desired to offer midwifery services as part of their practice. However, Boulder Community Hospital, at that time, had no credentialed private practice midwives,” Dr. Schuiling said. “Once again, I worked with the hospital to develop guidelines to credential nurse-midwives. I am proud to say I did not become their first credentialed private practice midwife because they required me to cut and repair 12 episiotomies. After almost two years in practice I had yet to achieve that criterion. I made it clear I would not perform an episiotomy unless it was needed, and the majority of my patients did not need one.”

When Dr. Schuiling returned to Grand Rapids, she began practicing with Bronson Women’s Service in Kalamazoo, Michigan. There she joined fellow FNU Alumni Hall of Fame inductee and CNEP Class 1 graduate Dr. Joan Slager. While practicing at Bronson, Dr. Schuiling began a dedicated interest in research. The Bronson practice was unique in that the midwives partnered with perinatology, versus generalist OBGYNs. A study was developed to look at this type of partnership, data were collected and the outcomes demonstrated that a high level of care was received by women who were pregnant and considered ‘at risk’, and that the care was cost effective. Following this study, Dr. Schuiling entered the University of Michigan’s PhD in Nursing program, focusing on women’s health. Adding to her trailblazing legacy, she was in the first Women’s Health cohort offered by the university and completed her PhD in 2003.

Throughout her postgraduate years, Dr. Schuiling maintained her connection to Frontier, teaching physiology courses and eventually becoming the curriculum coordinator alongside another Class 1 graduate and fellow FNU Alumni Hall of Fame inductee Dr. Susan Stone. Dr. Schuiling first met Dr. Stone when they took their comprehensive exams together at Kitty Ernst’s farm in Perkiomenville, Pennsylvania, and later took their boards together at Frontier Nursing Service in Hyden, Kentucky. Not long after, Dr. Stone and Dr. Schuiling were both teaching for Frontier when Kitty urged them to take on administrative leadership of the school. Dr. Stone, with her expertise and experience in administration, became the President and Dr. Schuiling, due to her experience in academics became the Curriculum Coordinator. One of the initiatives that Dr. Stone and Dr. Schuiling helped spearhead was the advancement of Kitty’s distance education, community-based model.

“Kitty always had the idea of being truly at a distance,” Dr. Schuiling said. “The computer became more and more prevalent, and we began using it for more than just turning in assignments. We were working in Hyden, Kentucky, and had brilliant people that were working with us who knew the technology and were pushing boundaries that I will tell you large universities in big cities weren’t pushing. One of the really unique things about Frontier was that they wanted everyone to be creative, they wanted us to take a risk, to try something different.”

Outside of her work with Frontier, Dr. Schuiling was active in the American College of Nurse-Midwives (ACNM), serving on numerous committees, chairing many of them. She also was the first ACNM Sr. Staff researcher assisting in developing an annual workforce survey, administering it online to all ACNM members and then analyzing data and reporting the outcomes. This work was aided by Dr. Judith Fullerton, CNM (ret) and Dr. Theresa Sipe, CNM who shared in co-authoring the many publications that resulted from this work.

“I’m very proud of the research we did for ACNM because it provided important information that the organization could use in obtaining funding, as well as for members to use in various ways, perhaps most importantly in negotiating salaries and developing practice guidelines,”

“One of the things that I’m most proud of is the publication of the book, Women’s Gynecological Health, now titled Gynecologic Healthcare,” Dr. Schuiling added. “I was co-teaching for Frontier with Dr. Francie Likis (FNU Class 20). The book came about because of our frustration with other books pathologizing women’s normal physiology. The more she and I talked, the more frustrated we became. We finally decided we were just going to write our own book.”

Dr. Schuiling and Dr. Likis collaborated on four editions of the book, which has twice received the ACNM Book of the Year Award and an American Journal of Nursing Award. It is often referred to by clinicians as the ‘Gold Standard’ for GYN care.

Today, Dr. Schuiling is an Emeritus Distinguished Professor at Northern Michigan University, most recently completing a term as President of the University following seven years as Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs.

Dr. Schuiling has received several awards for her work in academe and practice including the Award for Outstanding Scholarship, Distinguished Professor, ACNM’s Kitty Ernst award for innovative, creative endeavors in midwifery and women’s health, and the Dorthea Lang Pioneer Award from the ACNM Foundation. In 2013, she was named one of the Esteemed Women of Michigan for making extraordinary contributions through personal, volunteer and professional avenues to improve the community and inspire others in the state of Michigan. In 2019 she was a Michigan State Crain’s Notable Women in Education Leadership Awardee, and in 2023 she was honored by Marquette’s local Zonta International chapter for her dedication and work to supporting women’s rights, advocating for equality, education and support of children and families. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing, considered one of nursing’s highest honors.

Despite all of her accomplishments as a practitioner, educator, author, and current Vice Chair of the FNU Board, Dr. Schuiling was surprised when she received the news of her Alumni Hall of Fame induction.

“I was gob smacked,” she said. “I was totally taken by surprise. I am absolutely thrilled. It’s one of the most significant honors I have received. There are no words to express how absolutely flattered and humbled and excited I am. It’s the perfect culmination of an absolutely wonderful career.”