built environment, and the health care professions, always remaining on the front lines of clinical care. Through it all, we have ourished. The photos on the following pages tell the story of 75 years of extraordinary advancement and unwavering dedication, 75 years of excellence. Come walk with us through this remarkable and historic three- quarter-century journey. Although unable to include all those who have impacted the SONHS trajectory in this limited space, we are excited to share that a “75th Anniversary Memory Book” will be dedicated to celebrate them and this incredible milestone.
are providing new opportunities for faculty and students to learn, contribute, and thrive. With more international partners than ever before, SONHS at 75 is becoming the point of contact for workforce development and patient safety training across the hemisphere. We have navigated a steady course through decades of unprecedented immigration and the development of our South Florida community into a major metropolis that stands at the crossroads of the Americas. We survived a catastrophic Category 5 hurricane and a global pandemic, never wavering in our response to the most vulnerable. We have adapted to momentous changes in population, the
clinicians, NIH-funded investigators, and leaders who take their rightful place at the tables where health care and public health policy is crafted. Under the leadership of Dean Cindy L. Munro since 2017, SONHS has embraced a new vision to be novel, optimistic, and world-changing (“NOW”), an aspiration that embraces and enhances the U’s strategic plan to be known as a hemispheric, excellent, relevant, and exemplary university (“HERE”). Innovative dual- degree programs, interdisciplinary research and service projects with other UM schools, and expanding collaborations with community health care partners
In the 1950s, students attended undergraduate nursing classes in converted World War II barracks. Today, two state-of-the-art facilities in the heart of the Coral Gables campus—the M. Christine Schwartz Center for Nursing and Health Studies and the Simulation Hospital Advancing Education and Research (S.H.A.R.E. TM )— meet the learning needs of new generations of students by integrating the most advanced didactic, research, and simulation technology available into every class. Moreover, today’s SONHS students pursue degrees that take them well beyond what was possible back then, earning specialized master’s and doctoral degrees that prepare them to be independent advanced practice
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Ann Marie McCrystal, B.S.N. ’59, changed her major from music and drama to nursing in the 1950s. “As soon as I spent the first day at Doctors Hospital, I knew all the drama I was looking for was right there!” she recalls. “That summer, after spending six weeks in the OR, I knew I had found my home.” (See our Alumni Profile on page 35 for McCrystal’s story.)
Nursing became its own school in 1968 and its first dean, Gwendoline MacDonald, was appointed in 1970. During the 1970s, the school established a Master of Science in Nursing and one of Florida’s first midwifery programs. The Ph.D. in nursing program was launched in 1985.
In 1948, the nursing major was introduced at the University of Miami. It was South Florida’s first collegiate nursing program.
In the 1950s, the Department of Nursing was formally established in the College of Arts and Sciences. The first class of 10 students graduated in 1956 under department chair Dora Eldredge Blackmon, who introduced a “team nursing” class in local hospitals to improve response times and triaging of patients needing the most urgent help.
During the 1950s postwar boom, Department of Nursing classes were held in temporary World War II barracks that students called “the cardboard college.”
When Hurricane Andrew struck in 1992, the school started a nurse-managed primary care clinic in the devastated region of South Dade. Pictured, right, then-Dean Horner at the pop-up clinic in Homestead.
20 heart beat | SPRING 2023
SPRING 2023 | heart beat 21
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