Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Frances Johnson, at your service

Photos and story by James Hill

For the past five years, Frances Johnson has been giving back.

After years as a registered nurse in the Navy and at various hospitals across the country, she’s spending her retirement wisely. She is a volunteer with PCC’s Senior Service Corps, a volunteer program for older adults. It provides seniors with meaningful projects within the campus community, and the opportunity to learn about programs and classes within the college.

Johnson’s main focus is the radiology program at the Sylvania Campus. It’s an area she knows well. She worked as a registered technologist in radiology for many years.

“I usually do whatever they need me to do,” Johnson said. “Usually, for positioning so the students can test their skills with the technology, or being a test subject wherever needed. I want to make the students better at what they do. They can’t get better by reading books. They have to apply their skills.”

Volunteers in the Senior Service Corps are 50 or older and perform a wide range of services: greet new students at the beginning of each term, host a campus information desk, build sets for the theater arts program, provide office support, help in the library, organize and maintain the rock and fossil collection for the geology department.

The program tries to design a position that fits the volunteer’s interests and time commitments. This could be from several times a term to once or more a week, and work can involve any of PCC’s campuses or centers.

Johnson, who earned her doctorate from Portland State University and taught grad school at the University of Portland, says that her volunteer work really makes a difference. Her goal is to help the students in the program get used to dealing with a person rather than relying on books or the machinery.

“It’s why I volunteer,” Johnson said. “When I sit in the lab (as their patient), I’m the real deal. They learn quickly they can’t mumble directions. They learn that the patient may not respond right if they don’t understand them.”

Johnson, who loves to travel around the world (especially New Zealand) and volunteers across the country, says she’ll continue to volunteer her services at PCC and the radiology program. It’s what she loves. She also volunteers her time at the Oregon Zoo in its information booth and giving animal talks. She also helps out at Portland Center Stage, bringing food for the hard-working and often exhausted actors and, “when they smell the food, they just blossom.”

Will she ever quit and slow down? “No. I don’t do well with inactivity,” she said with a chuckle.

For more information, contact the Senior Service Corps at 503-977-4358 or 503-639-7208.

Related Pages:

Volunteer Opportunities