The Nursing Schools

1894–2026 · BOUNDARY SIZE — NO NURSING SCHOOL EVER STOOD INSIDE THE LINE

No nursing school has ever been seated inside the designated place; the succession that trained this ground's nurses is a South Bend and Mishawaka succession, and it runs in two hospital lines and one college line. The Methodist line came first: Epworth Hospital and Training School — the training school is in the founding name of 1894 — became the Memorial Hospital School of Nursing at the 1945 renaming, and closed in 1988, ninety-four years after it opened; the Indiana State Archives' closed-school record carries its students, 1885–1988 in the database's span. The Holy Cross line: Saint Joseph's Hospital School of Nursing opened in 1907, and in 1950 merged with three other Sisters of the Holy Cross nursing schools to form Holy Cross Central School of Nursing; its last class graduated in 1952, the merged school was renamed Holy Cross School of Nursing in 1969, and it closed in 1975. The college line succeeded both, and its dates interlock with the hospital schools' closings. Indiana University South Bend opened its nursing programme in 1975 — the year Holy Cross closed — with the registered-nurse-to-BSN completion track; established the four-year traditional baccalaureate in 1988 — the year Memorial's school closed; added an associate degree in 1989, not offered after 2001; and added the Master of Science in Nursing in 2008. Its School of Nursing, in the Vera Z. Dwyer College of Health Sciences, still holds clinical priority at Memorial Hospital, whose units host IUSB dedicated education units. Across the river line, Bethel University in Mishawaka — the boundary's college — established its nursing programme in 1980 and carries it in November 2026 as a School of Nursing offering the associate, baccalaureate (traditional and completion) and master's degrees, all accredited by the Accreditation Commission for Education in Nursing, with its simulation laboratory on the Mishawaka campus. The succession stated once: hospital diploma schools, 1894–1988; the public university's degrees, 1975 to the present; the Christian university's programme, 1980 to the present. Granger's nurses were trained in all three eras, in none of them on Granger ground.

Sources: Indiana State Archives, Closed Indiana Nursing School Student Records release, April 12, 2011 (Memorial Hospital School of Nursing — opened 1894 as Epworth Hospital and Training School, changed to Memorial in 1945, closed 1988; Saint Joseph's Hospital School of Nursing — opened 1907, merged 1950 to form Holy Cross Central School of Nursing, last class 1952; Holy Cross Central — formed 1950, renamed Holy Cross School of Nursing 1969, closed 1975). Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education, evaluation team report on Indiana University South Bend, 2020 (the 1975 RN-BSN opening; the 1988 baccalaureate; the 1989–2001 associate degree; the 2008 MSN; the Memorial Hospital clinical relationship). Grace College's Bethel nursing partnership record and Bethel University's School of Nursing catalogue, read November 2026 (the programme established 1980; the ADN, BSN and MSN offerings; ACEN accreditation).