Scott and White School of Nursing

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say, so take it straight from the source. Now, some stories start with a grand vision and a ribbon-cutting and a brass band. This one started with two doctors, a former Catholic convent, and a conviction that nursing deserved to be treated as a real profession.

The year was 1904, and Dr. Arthur C. Scott and Dr.

Raleigh White, Jr., were building something in Temple, Texas. They had their Temple Sanitarium, and they decided that sanitarium needed a school of nursing to go with it. So that's what they built.

Right there on South Fifth Street and Avenue F, in a building that had once been a Catholic convent, they started instructing a small local student body, the doctors themselves doing the teaching alongside their nursing superintendent. From the very beginning, Scott and White grounded that school in the philosophy of Florence Nightingale. Not just technique, not just procedure, but a whole atmosphere of training and education.

Now, a small local program in a converted convent might not sound like the stuff of legend, but hold on, because that school had a way of growing. The curriculum expanded, the name of the school changed over the years, and the reach of the program kept stretching further. By 1946, nurses' training had grown to include a liberal arts education offered in conjunction with Temple Junior College.

And then, just three years later, in 1949, the school was ranked among the nation's top programs in nursing. A former convent on a street corner in Temple, Texas, rubbing shoulders with the best in the country. By 1968, administrators were planning a two-year phasing out of the diploma program and the beginning of a baccalaureate nursing program at Mary Hardin-Baylor College.

That was the close of one chapter. Over sixty-six years as a diploma program, the Scott and White School of Nursing graduated one thousand two hundred and thirty-three nurses, and those nurses went on to serve prominently in health care worldwide. Two doctors, a convent, and a philosophy, and they sent over twelve hundred professionals out into the world to do the work.

Not a bad run for something that started that small.

What the marker says

The School of Nursing was founded in 1904 by Dr. Arthur C. Scott and Dr. Raleigh White, Jr., as a part of their Temple Sanitarium to provide professional training for nurses. Initially a small local student body was instructed by the doctors and nursing superintendent at their facility, a former Catholic convent on South Fifth Street and Avenue F in Temple. Doctors Scott & White based the nursing school on the philosophy of Florence Nightingale, and created an atmosphere of training and education. The school expanded over the years, and changes took place in both the name of the school and the diversity of the curriculum. In 1946 nurses' training included a liberal arts education in conjunction with Temple Junior College. By 1949 the school was ranked among the nation's top programs in nursing. In 1968 administrators planned a two-year phasing out of the diploma program in nursing and the beginning of the baccalaureate nursing program at Mary Hardin-Baylor College. During its 66 years of existence as a diploma program, the Scott & White School of Nursing graduated 1,233 nurses who served prominently in health care worldwide. (1997)