WASHINGTON COUNTY — When Nancy Rouse interned at the Maryland Correctional Training Center in 1979, she told herself that one day she would be a prison warden.

She retires next month as warden of Roxbury Correctional Institution, the second prison south of Hagerstown at which she has held that position.

Prison officials call her a trailblazer: The first female warden in the Western Region, and only the second in a facility that wasn’t a women’s prison.

Rouse said she doesn’t think of herself as a female warden, just as a warden.

The inmates certainly don’t care that she’s a woman, she said.

“They are anxious to get to whoever is in charge,” Rouse said. “They’re less biased than anybody.”

Rouse will transfer leadership of RCI on June 30 to Gregg Hershberger, now assistant warden at the Maryland Correctional Institution.

Having started out in case management and moving up through those ranks, Rouse said she believes she had it easier than the women who started as correctional officers.

While pursuing an associate degree from what was then Hagerstown Junior College (now Hagerstown Community College), Rouse interned under then-Warden Jon Galley.

She spent her time reviewing American Correctional Association standards to ensure the prison’s compliance.

Her work on that project made it “apparent that she should have a job,” said Galley, now the assistant commissioner for the Division of Correction’s Western Region.

Rouse found the work “comfortable.” She grew up wanting to be a secretary, and then thought she wanted to be a police officer, but a life in corrections seemed to fit, she said.

Galley said he hates to see Rouse retire.

But, he said, “I’m glad it worked out we were able to move her from an unpaid intern to a retiring warden.”

In 1980, Rouse became a clerk-typist in the case management department at MCTC.

Three years later, the Roxbury Correctional Institution opened across the street and with new positions opening, she became a classification counselor — now case manager — at the Maryland Correctional Institution.

A few promotions to case management supervisor and facility administrator followed, and two decades later, in June 2003, she was the assistant warden at RCI.

Then in March 2005, she was named acting warden at MCI. By July 1 of that year, she was officially that prison’s warden. In March 2008, she transferred to RCI.

She’s enjoyed all the jobs and learned something from each one that prepared her to be warden, Rouse said.

Life in corrections has been interesting, she said.

“There’s never a day that’s the same as another day,” she said.

In 1991, she was called in during a riot at MCI. She had training in hostage negotiation and also served as the prison’s public information officer.

She remembered that day as “mind-boggling.”

“I’ve never seen anything like that ... the damage done,” she said.

Any major disturbances, when staff members get injured or people under your care die, are the hardest, she said.

Her worst day on the job was in January 2006, when RCI officer Jeffery A. Wroten was killed by an inmate he was guarding at Washington County Hospital.

Prisons get the least attention of all the areas in the criminal justice system, but as warden she has a responsibility to the inmates, the public and the staff to make sure inmates are cared for while they’re in her institution, Rouse said.

Attitudes and policies have changed during the years she’s worked in corrections, Rouse said.

Medical care and sanitation are stressed and have been taken to a new level, and various programming, including drug and parenting programs, are now offered to inmates, she said.

“Helping people with life skills, having them think before they do something” is a new approach, she said.

She might continue to volunteer in her retirement, and has an interest in using her background to help victims navigate the often-confusing criminal justice system, she said.