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NIU Office of Public Affairs


News Release

Contact: Mark McGowan, NIU Office of Public Affairs
(815) 753-9472

May 5, 2004

NIU School of Nursing chair
leaves university for law career

DeKalb — Marilyn Frank Stromborg is trading the halls of academia for the halls of justice.

Stromborg, longtime chair of the Northern Illinois University School of Nursing, begins a new career today as a prosecutor in the Kane County State’s Attorney’s office. Stromborg, who earned her juris doctorate from the NIU College of Law in 1994, will prosecute domestic violence cases, including elder abuse.

Her new calling ends a 37-year association with the School of Nursing, where her mother began teaching in 1967, and her simultaneous 37-year career in nursing.

NIU nursing Professor Brigid Lusk will serve as acting chair, said Shirley Richmond, dean of the NIU College of Health and Human Sciences. A search committee will form in the fall or early spring to begin the process to find Stromborg’s successor, she added.

“Getting into a different profession, what I think is scariest is that I’m going from expert to novice, leaving a career after so long,” Stromborg said. “I will miss the faculty, the students and the university setting, the quality of life when you’re in academics. You really have the potential to make so much of a difference in a person’s life.”

Stromborg, who worked a semester’s externship in Winnebago County traffic court while still a law student, said she was surprised to receive the domestic violence assignment as a rookie. “The thought is my nursing background would help me,” she said.

She came to the School of Nursing in 1976 as an oncology clinical specialist – she was the project director on a three-year federal grant – before joining the faculty in 1979 and working alongside her mother. Roseanne Krcek Frank retired in 1981. (Stromborg’s father, Irving Frank, served as an adjunct professor, teaching growth and development from 1968 to 1973.)

In 1996, after a year as acting chair, Stromborg became chair.

An NIU Presidential Research Professor, she is the author of seven books, more than 72 articles and more than $3 million in grant funding. She also is the recipient of the 2004 Distinguished Advocate for Nursing Award from the Illinois Nurses Association (District 3).

She holds an NIU bachelor’s degree in biology and chemistry (1964) and an Ed.D. in educational psychology (1974). She earned her R.N. and M.S. in nursing from New York Medical College, and received her certificate as a medical nurse practitioner from Rush University College of Nursing in 1974.

Much of her career has focused on cancer nursing and research, an area in which she is recognized and published internationally.

Stromborg remains proud of the School of Nursing, which has accomplished much in recent years, including:

  • the renovation of the School of Nursing building;
  • the R.N. to B.S.N. completion program;
  • the enhanced graduate curriculum, including the post-master’s degree family nurse practitioner program;
  • online classes;
  • off-site classes, including those offered at Sherman Hospital in Elgin and Good Shepherd Hospital in Barrington;
  • the continued existence of the Tri-County Clinic, a joint operation with Kishwaukee Community College;
  • the tremendous number of scholarships awarded to nursing students, and
  • the tremendous amount of external grants.

In the meantime, Stromborg has resigned all her nursing-related appointments outside NIU.

She had been serving on the National Advisory Council for Nursing Research, the State of Illinois Board of Nursing and a scientific review group of a subcommittee of the National Cancer Institute, which reviews all cooperative oncology groups in the United States and Canada. She also chaired the research committee for the American Board of Nursing Specialties, which represents all U.S. nursing organizations that certify nurses.

“I’m an entry-level lawyer. I won’t have the freedom of leaving to attend the meetings,” she said. “It’s very difficult to keep your feet in two professions at one time.”

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