Glenn Connelly, Assistant Photo Editor

Patricia Coe, 58, wears pieces of her identity on her lab coat. A red pin with the words “question authority” is between a rhinestone American flag and a peace sign, – all referring to Coe’s past as a human rights activist during the 1960s. The name tag on the left side of her coat signifies her career as one of the first nurse practitioners in the country. But perhaps the piece that identifies her the most is the round, gold pin featuring Hepner Hall.

Coe, a nurse practitioner for Student Health Services, plans to retire on Dec. 30 after studying and working at San Diego State for 38 years. Her husband, Doug Coe, 60, also plans to retire after working as the director of SDSU’s Social Science Research Laboratory for 37 years.

“I’ve had a designed life up until now,” Patricia Coe said. “So this is going to be an experiment in having a liberation.”

She said she is ready to trade in the structure of a typical day job in order to add some new layers to her identity: world traveler, volunteer and Mission Trails park ranger.

Though she is leaving SDSU, she said the university is as much a part of her life as she is a part of its functioning.

She graduated from SDSU in 1972 with a degree in nursing. A year later, she attended University of California, Los Angeles to become one of 18 college health nurse practitioners as a result of Assembly Bill 1503,

which allowed registered nurses to obtain further medical training to work more collaboratively with physicians. This includes writing prescriptions without consulting a physician, she said.

Patricia Coe had originally planned to be an anesthetist but said she realized all of her patients would be asleep. She said she wanted to interact with her patients.

It is this contact with students that she said she will miss the most.

“I love to hear what they’re studying and where they’re traveling – other dimensions in their life,” she said. “It puts that person into context as a real individual. I’m not seeing a sore throat or a left ear pain. I’m seeing a person.”