OU College of Nursing

OU College of Nursing. . "Nursing…requires as exclusive a devotion, as hard a preparation, as any painter's or sculptor's work." Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) , Nursing education began at the University of Oklahoma in 1911 with the creation of a two-year Training School for Nurses. Located in the State University Hospital on Fourth Street in Oklahoma City, the school was under the administration of the College of Medicine, with hospital nursing superintendent Annette B. Cowles serving as director. , In 1913, the program graduated its first class. That same year, it became a three-year program leading to the certificate of graduate nurse. In 1915, the school was moved into a large former residence on N.E. Fourth Street and, in 1921, moved into a newly constructed three-story dormitory and classroom facility adjacent to the then University Hospital. In the 1929-30 university catalog, the program was listed for the first time as "the School of Nursing.", During World War II, the University School of Nursing participated in the Cadet Nurse Corps program, which greatly increased enrollment., A new building for the school was completed in 1947. The upper floors served as a dormitory, with the basement housing a nursing arts lab and an auditorium. The school continued to use the facility by University Hospital and classrooms in the College of Medicine, which was then located in the present-day College of Health Building on 13th Street. For almost three decades, Olive Allen served as housemother to nursing students, enforcing curfews and overseeing decorum., Nursing remained a part of the College of Medicine until 1951, when it was transferred to the College of Arts and Sciences and became a baccalaureate program. The first two African American students were accepted into the school that year and, under the explicit edict of OU President George L. Cross, took up residence in the nurses' dormitory "without discrimination.", In 1955, the first baccalaureate degrees in nursing were awarded, and a graduate program was implemented in 1973., The decade of the 1970s saw tremendous growth in students and faculty at a time when the college was without a permanent facility. The building that had housed the program since 1947 was demolished in 1970 to make way for the Basic Sciences Education Building. First the college was housed in two former residences on 14th Street and a church on Kelley Avenue, then it shared an interim facility on 12th Street. , The present building was completed in time for the 1977-78 academic year. By this time, the College of Nursing had grown to 335 undergraduates and master's students, including both men and women. According to Gloria Smith, Ph.D., who served as dean from 1973 to 1984, the long-anticipated building changed the image of the college, bringing recognition that it was "a resource for all of nursing in Oklahoma."