OU College of Nursing Recognizes Distinguished Alumni Award Recipient

Barbara Holtzclaw, PhD, RN, FAAN, FGSA, is a Clinical Nurse Scientist whose program of research centers on patients' thermoregulatory responses to illness and treatment in vulnerable patients. Her research funding included four major federally funded projects, with two R01 grants to study febrile symptoms. Her research funding and over 50 publications on the topics of fever, shivering, hypothermia, and management of thermoregulatory responses have helped establish her reputation in this area. She is best known for translational studies where basic science concepts are used to develop clinical nursing interventions. She was an interdisciplinary collaborator on an interdisciplinary study of autonomic and temperature correlates of idiopathic night sweats in older adults. More recently she has become interested in immunosenescence and how it suppresses immune responses to vaccines and affects febrile responses in older adults.  She retired in 2021 from her position as Associate Dean for Research and Professor, College of Nursing and Associate Director, Geriatric Nursing Translational Research Training, Donald W. Reynolds Center of Geriatric Nursing Excellence, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, but continues to write, participate in editorial reviews, and mentor aspiring nurse scientists.

“Dr. Holtzclaw's career as a nurse and a scientist demonstrate the full potential of nursing. Throughout her illustrious career, Dr. Holtzclaw has demonstrated the unique ability of nurses to identify, explore and mitigate physiological changes that impact a patient’s health, wellbeing, and quality of life. She has also demonstrated the gift that nurses bring when they teach patients, families, nursing students and nurses, as well as interdisciplinary health care professionals, about best practices of care that are based on solid science. It is with tremendous pride that we celebrate Dr. Holtzclaw as not only a distinguished alumnus from the Fran and Earl Ziegler College of Nursing but also as a celebrated Professor Emeritus from OU,” said Melissa Craft, interim dean of the college of nursing.

Dr. Holtzclaw remains active, primarily through contact with writing, consulting, and participation with Professional Research Organizations (AAN, MNRS, SNRS). She serves on Expert Panels for Aging and Emerging Infectious Diseases with the American Academy of Nursing.