Robert & Gretchen Osgood
ROBERT E. OSGOOD, the third dean of Johns Hopkins SAIS, was a highly respected expert in foreign policy and the author of several significant texts on international relations. He played a key role at SAIS for 25 years until his death in 1986. His former students loved him for his wit, his elegant writing, and his enduring wisdom in things personal and professional. He was SAIS’ director of American Foreign Policy and co-director of Security Studies, but perhaps his most valuable contribution to SAIS was his role in developing what has been called the “SAIS approach,” the analysis of policy based on strong theoretical and historical concepts. He also launched the Master of International Public Policy for mid-career professionals. Outside of his involvement with SAIS, Dr. Osgood was named director of the Washington Center for Foreign Policy Research in 1967, served in 1969-70 on the U.S. National Security Council, and was a member of the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Council from 1983 to 1985. Bob was a revered mentor to generations of SAIS students, both while they were studying and afterwards.
GRETCHEN A. OSGOOD spent 24 years working for the Public Health Service, which became a part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She wrote articles on nursing and government management of nursing for professional journals. Among them was a survey of federal nursing priorities for the 1980s. Among her professional memberships, she was a past president of the District of Columbia League for Nursing and served on its board until her death. She was a recipient of the Public Health Service’s Superior Service Award and the American Academy of Nursing’s President’s Award for deepening understanding of the profession. Gretchen Anderson was a Minneapolis native, a 1943 graduate of Smith College in Northampton, Mass., and a 1946 graduate of Johns Hopkins University’s nursing school. She received a master’s degree in supervision in public health nursing from Boston University’s nursing school in 1950. She spent nine years as an associate nursing director at the University of Illinois’s research and education hospitals in Chicago before settling in the Washington area in 1962. In 1946, she married Robert E. Osgood, who became a dean of Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. After his death in 1986, she endowed a professorship and a student fellowship, both in her husband’s name, and also gave money toward summer internships, all at SAIS. She had no immediate survivors.