Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing
A Brief History
Over the past century, the school has evolved from a small training school in a 50-bed hospital to a school that now graduates more than 200 baccalaureate, master’s, and doctoral students each year. Emory is ranked among the top 10 private U.S. schools of nursing, with the goal of becoming the best private nursing school in the nation.
The evolution of the School of Nursing since 1905 features seven moves, three new buildings, nine directors of nursing, nine deans (some interim), and four name changes. The school helped break the gender barrier by introducing more women to a traditionally male campus and the color barrier by graduating Emory’s first African American students.
When the school celebrated the groundbreaking of the Asbury Circle building (its second building and sixth home) in 1968, Dean Ada Fort reflected on the school’s first 60 years. The first 20 years marked the birth of the school on August 16, 1905, at the Wesley Memorial Hospital Training School for Nurses, located at the corner of Auburn Avenue and Courtland Street in Atlanta (now the site of the Auburn Avenue Research Library of African American Culture and History). The school was a part of the hospital, and both were housed in a renovated mansion known as the Calico House. Directed by Alberta Dozier, the nursing program comprised two years of practical training and some theoretical classroom instruction.
The second 20-year period began in 1922 when the school and hospital moved to the Emory campus. In 1929, the school moved into its own building, the Florence Candler Harris Home for Nurses (now known as Harris Hall, a coed undergraduate residence hall). In 1932, the school experienced its first name change to Emory University Hospital School of Nursing.
The third 20-year period that Fort referenced included the school’s third name change to Emory University School of Nursing, when the school separated from the hospital and became an independent school of the university, led by Dean Julia Miller, in 1944. During this period, the school established its baccalaureate and graduate programs, Fort began her 25-year tenure as dean, and the Alpha Epsilon Chapter of Sigma Theta Tau International, the honorary society for nurses, was founded.
The school was just entering its fourth 20-year period at the time of its 1968 building groundbreaking, shortly after the school was renamed for Nell Hodgson Woodruff, the wife of Coca-Cola magnate and Emory philanthropist Robert Woodruff. Although she left nursing school to marry Mr. Woodruff in 1912, Nell remained committed to nursing throughout her life, primarily through voluntary service to the American Red Cross and Emory. The school built the Asbury Circle building and with the move created a new BSN curriculum that focused on a specific nursing model to include basic nursing concepts and processes combined with clinical practice experience.
A Progressive Movement
At the 1968 groundbreaking, Fort noted that throughout each period of the school’s history, one constant remained: “A belief that the only way a school of nursing can contribute toward producing the greatest nurse is that it provide for the total development of the person who is to be that great nurse.”
“This unchanging belief,” she added, “has been the element which has made these 60 years one progressive movement.” (Excerpted from Emory Magazine, March-April 1968.)
After Fort retired, that “progressive movement” continued under deans Edna Grexton, Clair Martin, and Dyanne Affonso. Today, under Dean Marla Salmon, Emory is among the nation’s top private schools of nursing.
With Dean Salmon at the helm, the school has risen eight notches in the U.S. News & World Report national rankings to 26th overall and 8th among private schools of nursing, with its graduate nurse-midwifery program ranked 7th nationwide. The school also has risen in research funding from the National Institutes of Health. In the same time frame, the school graduated its first PhD student; established the Lillian Carter Center for International Nursing; began the federally funded Center for Research on Symptoms, Symptom Interactions, and Health Outcomes; created the first simulation training laboratory on campus; and hosted three global conferences involving top government nurse and physician leaders from countries around the world.
“As we continue to be on the upswing, our aspiration is not only to be great, but to be the best in our commitment to care for others,” says Salmon. “What sets our school apart from others is our commitment not only to scholarship and leadership, but also to social responsibility.”
In this goal of “becoming the best,” the emphasis is on what Emory University President James Wagner calls “contributory” rather than “competitive excellence.” As Wagner explains, “[We want] to practice a meaningful excellence, a contributing excellence . . . [that] advances whatever it touches. It changes the way other people think. It changes the way other people do things.”
While the term “contributory excellence” may be new, the concept of collaboration and leadership toward the betterment of all is not new to the School of Nursing or to the nursing profession. Inherent in being a nurse, especially an Emory nurse, is the drive to do good through innovative care, research, education, leadership, and service to vulnerable populations. This concept of contributory excellence, of transforming the world through care—of being a leader, a contributor, a collaborator—is what will shape the School of Nursing and the nursing profession in the century to come.
By Amy Comeau, updated 12/06
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