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Getting to know Linfield’s
‘First Lady’
By Alexandra Feller,
Features Editor
April 22, 2019
First lady Naomi Pitcock has
joined the Linfield community in many ways. Pitcock, President Miles Davis’ wife, teaches nursing classes full time, as well as volunteering at her
daughter’s school, and shows support by attending events at Linfield with her
family
Pitcock and Davis finished
the 2017-’18 academic year at Shenandoah and arrived at Linfield in July. While
Davis started work as President of the college, Pitcock and her daughter were
able to explore the area.
“The Linfield community was
amazing, everyone who had a kid would bring them by during the summer so that
Elizabeth would have someone to play with,” Pitcock said.
Pitcock said they have been
enjoying the house, and love the easy access to “the best parts of college
life.”
Linfield students know they
will likely see the Davis family at extracurricular functions. While she
struggled in choosing, Pitcock says some of her favorite have been the Not Your
Forte acapella group performances and various sports competitions.
She enjoys being able to
attend Linfield events with Davis and her daughter as a family.
One of Naomi Pitcocks
favorite hobbies is gardning. Here she is brifly clearing flowers that have
fallen into her daughters fairy garden made by Carol Gallagher, official
groundskeeper. Pitcock’s backyard is decorated with bird feeders that attract
humming birds she and president Davis enjoy watching in their free time
Michelle Obama is Pitcock’s
hero because “She is such a strong person in her own right, but still such a
compliment to her husband.”
Following this model,
Pitcock has an extremely developed professional resume and is teaching Nursing
101 at Linfield, which is an introductory nursing class for freshmen and
sophomores.
In this class, students can
explore nursing history, as well as different career paths and areas that may
interest them as nursing students.
Teaching this course has
worked out well because it has allowed her to stay based in McMinnville, and
offers students more class options in their first and second years at Linfield.
Although she’s a teacher,
Pitcock’s biggest fear is public speaking: “My first class [as a teacher] I was
so nervous because nursing classes are typically three hours long,” she said.
Through practice, this became more
natural and now she said she knows exactly how to fill a three hour block.
Pitcock originally worked as
a nurse for 15 years. She has now been teaching for 8.
She maintains a passion for
learning and educating. She attended old Dominion University for her bachelors
of science management. After graduating she was hired at the University of
Virginia in their Neuro Trauma Unit.
“My favorite part of college was meeting so
many people from all over the world and getting to know what experiences had
shaped them,” Pitcock said.
Working in the trauma unit
was a steep learning curve for Pitcock, but she enjoyed working with that
patient population. The trauma unit specializes in brain and spinal cord
injuries as well as tumors in these same areas.
Since UVA is an academic
teaching hospital, it advocated for Pitcock to go back to school and achieve
her masters degree.
She received her masters
degree in community and public health nursing at UVA while working in its
trauma unit.
In her free time, Naomi
Pitcock also coaches her daughter’s track team. After seeking advice from coach
Gary Killbourn, she decided the best activities to practive with the kids would
be “sharks and minnows.”
This is when Pitcock
discovered her passion for teaching. UVA hosts year four nurses who are
finishing their practicum. Practicum is in the last semester for a nursing
student and it requires them to work in a practicing hospital with a
professional nurse.
“I got to have some of UVAs fourth-year year
students come and work with me,” Pitcock said. “I enjoyed going to work so much
more when I could share it with a student nurse. So at that point I kinda just
decided that maybe teaching would be something that I was interested in.”
With her passion for learning,
Pitcock decided to pursue her doctorate at Shenandoah University in Winchester,
Virginia. Her dissertation addresses the difficulties in finding breastfeeding
resources.
“While I was in graduate school, I had [my
daughter] Elizabeth. I had such a difficult time finding breastfeeding
resources. I thought this is ridiculous that a graduate level nurse can’t find
breastfeeding resources.”
Winchester has a higher
Hispanic population than the rest of the state, and Pitcock was concerned that
this population specifically was not receiving the help and education they
needed. So, as a part of her doctoral research she developed a program that
provided free classes and helped during accessible hours of the day regarding
prenatal and postnatal care.
After graduating with her
doctorate, Pitcock was hired at Shenandoah University as a full-time professor.