Dr.
Geraldine Rinker
'Good Students Are a Joy to Teach'
Since retiring from MCG in 2000, Dr. Geraldine Rinker enjoys exploring tax records, census data and Web sites in search of her ancestors.
“It’s interesting how these things kind of dovetail and you use the skills you learn in one field in another,” says the Professor Emerita in the Department of Medical Technology. “In genealogy work, I use the attention to detail and the research skills I got from earning my doctorate in education from the University of Georgia. Having to write that dissertation and document everything trained me well.”
Largely through e-mail connections, Dr. Rinker has traced her father’s family back to the late 1700s and her mother’s to around 1830.
That family history includes four generations of health care workers, many with MCG degrees. Her father, Dr. John Robert Rinker, was chief of urology at MCG from 1943-72.
Geraldine Rinker earned a bachelor’s in bacteriology from the University of Kentucky. After working at University Hospital for four years, she joined the MCG staff in 1963, working in the hospital microbiology lab and earning a master’s degree in medical microbiology and public health from MCG. She was named to the Department of Medical Technology faculty in 1967.
From 1970 to her retirement, she served as the administrative technologist in the hospital laboratory at MCG, earning a master’s degree in business administration along the way.
She’s held fast to the roles of teacher and learner, even in retirement. She is a docent for the Morris Museum of Art and volunteers with the Women Artists Research Committee.
As a member of MCG’s Milton Antony Guild, Dr. Rinker’s legacy as an educator will endure for future generations. “I’ve spent a good part of my life associated with MCG, and I’d like to see MCG recruit and retain top students,” she says. “Good students are a joy to teach, so my gift will support scholarships for outstanding students.”
- Ellen Gladden Jones
For more information about the Milton Antony Guild,
contact Tony Duva at 800-869-1113 or
aduva@mcg.edu.