Roy, Callista
Biographical note
Callista Roy, CSJ, was born on October 14, 1939 (the feast day of St. Callistus) in Los Angeles, California, as Lorraine Callista Roy, to Fabien W. and Pirth (Hemenway) Roy. She joined the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Carondelet in 1958, making first vows on March 19, 1960. She earned a bachelor of science in nursing from Mount St. Mary’s College, Los Angeles, in 1963, a master’s degree in nursing from UCLA in 1966, and master’s and doctoral degrees in sociology from UCLA in 1973 and 1977, respectively. She served as a postdoctoral fellow in neuroscience nursing at the University of California, San Francisco, under the supervision of Connie Robinson and with the support of a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation program grant.
The majority of Roy’s career was spent as Professor and Nursing Theorist at Boston College’s Connell School of Nursing, where she was hired in 1987 as part of the establishment of the doctoral program. She is best known for developing the Roy Adaptation Model, a conceptual model of nursing an adaptive process of guiding people and communities to optimal health by balancing their varied needs. Her other research areas included cognitive adaptation and nursing interventions with patients who sustained head injuries, and adaptation of patients with chronic neurologic conditions, both somewhat inspired by her own experiences with an acoustic neuroma.
Roy retired from Boston College in 2017 and returned to California to live with her religious community.
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Callista Roy, CSJ papers
Personal, professional, and research materials of twentieth-century nurse theorist and Boston College faculty member Callista Roy, CSJ, including article drafts, awards, biographical information, conference presentations, correspondence, photographs, research notes, and teaching materials.
Collection is open for research.
Records containing personal identifiable information (PII) are closed. All university records dating after 1968 are closed; access with permission of the office.
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