Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Dr. Mary Tedesco- Schnecks Double Dipped Course: NUR 300: Health Assessment Through the LifeSpan.

Genesis Madu: Good Morning!
Dr. Mary Tedesco-Schneck: Good Morning!
Genesis Madu: First off, thank you again for allowing us to interview you today
Dr. Mary Tedesco-Schneck: Yeah no trouble!
Genesis Madu: Our first question is what is your course called? And how long have you taught
it?
Dr. Mary Tedesco-Schneck: The course is called Health Assessment in a Lifespan and I started
teaching it in Fall 2018, so this Spring makes my 5th academic year.
Genesis Madu: You are one of three faculty now counting an upper-level course in the Nursing
major as a WGS elective. What led you to make this decision and in what ways do you believe
that your course may be related to or enhanced by WGS coursework?
Dr. Mary Tedesco-Schneck: I really didn’t consider putting it into WGS until Elizabeth Neiman
approached me, it makes perfect sense, so in health assessment you typically think about how a
student nurse learns how to you know listen to the heart, and listen to the lungs and those types
of things, but there’s other things that are included in assessment like looking at somebody’s
social determinants of health. How gender, sexuality, socio-economic status, race affects who
that person is and how they experience the health care system and how they experience health
and illness so it makes sense that it would fit into WGS.
Genesis Madu: Based on your own professional experience in healthcare, what excites you most
about this new collaboration between programs?
Dr. Mary Tedesco-Schneck: Well it helps students think about nursing in a broader sense right,
just as I said sometimes we tend to compartmentalize things, we think about in terms of our
assessments even in terms of our interventions you know, you’re taking a blood pressure, but this
is broader and so you have to think about all the things that impact people’s health, and so I think
that this really brings it actually to the forefront and also helps them to see healthcare in a more
systems approach. Things that impact people’s health might be policies that are put in place in
healthcare systems that either advantage them or disadvantage them based on sexuality, gender
and things of that nature.
Genesis Madu: And have you had any conversations with students or gotten feedback from
students about this new collaboration between WGS and the School of Nursing?
Dr. Mary Tedesco-Schneck: I think when Dr. Neiman came to the class, the students had a high
level of interest, they were really attentive. They could see when she started to speak that it made
sense for it to be part of WGS as a minor and in fact I believe several of them she had told me
had gone to her office to find out a little bit more, so I think the students are really excited about
it. I think it’s so important to do that because I feel like a lot of time we pigeonhole minors and
majors so you know you have WGS over at that box and so those aren’t issues that we deal with
in engineering for example, well they are issues you deal with in engineering but you just haven’t
thought about it yet, so I think it really helps to bridge that gap.

Genesis Madu: Yeah and that’s great! In relation to the previous question, do any specific
scenarios come to mind where a Nurse or other healthcare professional might benefit from WGS
background?
Dr. Mary Tedesco-Schneck: Yeah so I can give you two examples, one in reference to systems
which I already talked about, so one of the things we talk about in the class I’m teaching now,
[Health Assessment in a Lifespan] is when they go to their providers office usually and you’re a
new patient you have to fill out a form, that asks you things about your past medical history, etc.
But usually the first thing they ask you is your name, your sex which is usually only male and
female on the sheet, your race perhaps which only has a couple of categories, and then it might
ask you your sexual preference which again is probably only male or female. So that might not
feel so welcoming to someone who doesn’t fit into one of those boxes, right. So that’s on a
broader level when you look at the system. I’m a pediatric nurse practitioner, so I work with
children from about 0 to 21, so when you think about adolescence and maybe you may even
think about your own experience when you went to your provider for a well visit and they were
doing some screening and I’m sure they would’ve asked you “do you have a boyfriend?”, just
making that assumption that you were heterosexual right, so asking the question of “do you have
someone special in your life?” doesn’t make that assumption and it proves the relationship
between the provider and the patient and makes them more comfortable to talk about anything
that they would want to talk about in relation to that.
Genesis Madu: I know you touched upon this before, but prior to Dr. Neiman’s visit would you
ever have imagined counting your course as a WGS elective?
Dr. Mary Tedesco-Schneck: Yes, I think I would have cause I mean I always incorporate it, so
my Masters and my Bachelors are both in Nursing but my Phd is in Education and my
dissertation was in Feminist Pedagogy so I’ve kind of always looked on that take of things so I
think I’ve always tried to incorporate it in some aspect.
Genesis Madu: Now looking ahead, has including this course as a WGS elective impacted how
you teach it? Or have there been any changes at all in the way that you will present the material
to your students?
Dr. Mary Tedesco-Schneck: So as I said, I’ve always really incorporated it, but it does give me
moment to pause and always think about, okay, is there more I should include or how would be a
good way to present this to the students to engage them because you also find sometimes
conversations surrounding WGS or any conversation around things that may be uncomfortable
for students or sometimes hard to engage students in because they may feel, you know, awkward
talking about it or maybe they may feel self conscious about how people may perceive them and
so it really challenges you to make sure that you’re classroom is welcoming to all people.
Genesis Madu: Lastly Is there anything else that you would like to share regarding the
collaboration between WGS and the School of Nursing?
Dr. Mary Tedesco-Schneck: No, I am just really excited about it, I feel pretty honored that Dr.
Neiman reached out to me to be part of this, and I’m also really excited that two of my other colleagues are apart of this too in the Nursing department, because I think it will help all of our faculty to think about this, and it’s nice to collaborate with other Nursing faculty in that regard.
Genesis Madu: That’s amazing to hear! I just want to say thank you again for allowing me to
talk to you today and it was a pleasure to meet you!
Dr. Mary Tedesco-Schneck: Yes you too!!