Dr. Susan Hagedorn ’77

Marieb College of Nursing alumna Dr. Sue Hagedorn ’77 wins this year’s Revolutionary Spirit Award, which honors individuals who embody the pioneering spirit of UMass Amherst in their pursuit of innovation and progress.

Hagedorn is a nurse practitioner and educator whose career has been dedicated to social justice as a nurse educator, practitioner, philanthropist, filmmaker, and activist. She has practiced and taught psychiatric, pediatric, and public health nursing as well as pediatric and women’s health nurse practitioners.

A part-time resident of Block Island, she has produced more than 20 films focused on nursing and social justice—documentaries including Inventing the Nurse Practitioner in America (2016), Island Nurse (2010), a portrait of Block Island’s Mary Donnelly, and Deputized ¿Como Pudo Pasar? (2012), a film about a murder on Long Island.  She is currently working on a film about recently-deceased peace activist Father Daniel Berrigan, another part-time Block Islander.

Her 2012 documentary focused on the 2008 killing of 37-year-old Ecuadorian immigrant Marcelo Lucero, who was assaulted by a group of teenaged boys cruising the streets “beaner-hopping,” a term used to describe the decade-long ritual on Long Island of attacking Latinos for sport. The film delves deeply into the complex environment in which teens—pumped with adrenaline, aggression, alcohol, and anger—target vulnerable Latinos perceived to be undocumented. The film dissects the anti-immigration messages and rhetoric flooding the community and asks whether the teens were “deputized” by the forces within their community to commit such a senseless act.

Hagedorn is a Fellow of the American Academies of Nursing and Nurse Practitioners and received the Kathleen Ann Mullen Memorial Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Field of Adolescent Health in the Rocky Mountain Region in 2017. Philanthropy is never far from Hagedorn: with her sister they are new donor advisers of the Hagedorn Foundation, which supports and promotes social equity on Long Island.