It all started in 1948, when the University of Miami introduced South Florida’s first collegiate nursing major. With a growing number of nurses returning from war and establishing a professional presence, the University contributed to the national mission by offering nursing courses in its repurposed World War II-era ROTC barracks on the Coral Gables Campus. In 1952 the University established a nursing department in the College of Arts and Sciences, with its first class of 10 students graduating four years later. That same year, as the University opened its medical school, President Bowman Foster Ashe saw the nation’s growing need for health care workers and expressed plans to expand nursing from a department to a school.
The school opened in 1968 amid another national nursing shortage and another war. In the decades that followed, the school offered students unparalleled community-based nursing and cultural competence experiences, including staffing a nurse-managed primary care pop-up clinic in Homestead after Hurricane Andrew and traveling to Haiti to implement educational training programs following the devastating 2010 earthquake.
Recognizing the importance of integrating health studies into its nursing curricula, the school changed its name to the School of Nursing and Health Studies in 2004 and began offering a health science bachelor’s degree and additional allied health tracks.
Other pioneering programs before and since have included a midwifery program, the M.S.N.-to-D.N.P. executive-style program, the B.S.N.-to-D.N.P. in Nurse Anesthesia program, and the Bachelor of Science in Public Health—some of the first of their kind in the state or nation.
The opening of the 53,000- square-foot, donor-supported M. Christine Schwartz Center for Nursing and Health Studies in 2006 solidified the school’s indelible footprint at the University, which expanded in 2017 with the opening of the 41,000- square-foot S.H.A.R.E. Simulation Hospital Advancing Research and Education.
The school has continually set high standards for meeting the health needs of a diverse community and seeking solutions that address important societal issues. The school also has been a valuable partner in promoting health equity on the world stage, both as a Center of Excellence for Health Disparities Research: El Centro and as a Pan American Health Organization/ World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Nursing Human Resources Development and Patient Safety. Today it ranks 11th nationwide among National Institutes of Health funding to nursing schools. From cutting-edge research and simulation excellence to expansive global collaborations, the School of Nursing and Health Studies has led the way well beyond what could have been envisioned in 1948.
