Seattle University, Deans Annual Lecture

 Major General Barbara Holcomb

Major General Barbara Holcomb, SU alumna, BSN '87, is the Commanding General of the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command (MRMC) and Fort Detrick, Md., and is Chief of the U.S. Army Nurse Corps. 

Major General Barbara Holcomb is the first nurse to serve as commander of MRMC and Ft. Detrick. As a cadet in ROTC, she was denied the role of battalion commander because the cadre said that a nurse would never be a commander. Major General Holcomb proved them wrong when she became commander as a captain and subsequently commanded at every rank thereafter, including as the first nurse to command Landstuhl Regional Medical Center.

Major General Holcomb was deployed to Desert Shield/Desert Storm, Macedonia and Kosovo. In 2010 she took her dream job as commander of a Combat Support Hospital in Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and New Dawn. She has been highly awarded and decorated throughout her extraordinary career.

Event registration begins at 4:00 p.m. A reception and poster presentation featuring scholarly work by SU nursing faculty and students will be held from 4:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m., followed by the keynote.