Engs, Ruth Clifford

Ruth Clifford Engs was born Ruth Clifford on September 15, 1939 in Ridgway, Pennsylvania to Elinor and Theodore Alexander Clifford and was later raised in Bethel, Vermont. In 1957, she graduated from Cushing Academy in Ashburnham, Massachusetts and then enrolled at the University of Vermont in Burlington, where, in 1961, she earned a B.A. in Liberal Arts with a major in chemistry and minors in English literature and biology.

After working as a laboratory assistant to virologist Elmer Pfefferkorn at Harvard Medical School from 1961 to 1963, Engs moved briefly to Australia where she worked as a computer programmer, before moving on to San Francisco, California in July of 1964. In 1968, she earned her degree in nursing from Merritt College in Oakland Hills, California and in 1970, she received M.S.’s in both Counseling Psychology and Health Education from the University of Oregon. After earning these degrees, Ruth Engs moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia where she served as an assistant professor at Dalhousie University, teaching both health education and nursing courses for a year.

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