Cynthia Broze received a Master of Science Degree at California State University, Long Beach, and her Nurse Practitioner training from the Women’s Healthcare Nurse Practitioner Program at Harbor-UCLA. She began writing professionally after completing the Master Class in Novel Writing program at UCLA with the late great Les Plesko.

Broze joined the Peace Corps in 1980 living in Sablayan, Occidental Mindoro (the Philippines) for two years and worked in community health and leprosy education. The town had no library so she organized one with 10,000 donated books she obtained from libraries and schools around the world.

PRESS

The University Archives and Special Collections thanks nurse-author Cynthia Broze for her personal quest to document the first BSN. It can be found in Chapter 8 of her book “Nurses of Los Angeles: Uncapping the Mystery” (Los Angeles: Semper Publishing, 2010).

The story behind the race to start California’s first nursing baccalaureate degree, By Victoria McCargar, University archivist, 09/11/2019 The Claim to BSN Fame

---

Working Nurse honored Cynthia Broze as a nurse who broke ground in her field.

Although she has been writing for years, the idea of a book was not foremost in Cynthia Broze’s mind. Rather, she had a question that no one seemed able to answer: “What was the first nursing school in Los Angeles?” Several schools or affiliated hospitals claimed the honor, but could anyone prove it? Visit Working Nurse magazine to read the full interview.

---