Nursing: The Wartime Line Runs Through the College

1861–2026

From the wards to the classroom. The college's own history of its nursing programs begins, correctly, in 1861 — with Mother Angela and the six sisters who went to Cairo with no training at all. The congregation's hospitals made the training formal, and South Bend got its share early: in 1907 the sisters opened the Saint Joseph Hospital School of Nursing in South Bend. In 1935 Sister Maria Amadeo, C.S.C., launched at Saint Mary's a five-year baccalaureate nursing program — the first in Indiana and one of the earliest in the country. In 1949 she established the Holy Cross Central School of Nursing, a three-year diploma program that standardized training across the congregation's five hospitals in Illinois and Indiana, whose graduates could add a fourth or fifth year at Saint Mary's and take the bachelor's degree.

Closed, and re-established. The baccalaureate program graduated its final students in 1962 and closed for lack of funds. The college re-established nursing in 1973 with state and national accreditation, and in 1975 Havican Hall — the former Campus School on the motherhouse ground — was renovated to house the reinstituted program. The line runs unbroken in kind if not in years from the Red Rover: today the college offers the B.S.N., a direct-entry Master of Science in Nursing begun in the fall of 2022 — the first in Indiana — and the Doctor of Nursing Practice, with the Center for Integrated Healthcare Education standing in Regina Hall, a building raised for the sisters' postulants in 1963–64. The college's nurses are pinned each year in the Church of Our Lady of Loretto, told in its own article below.

Sources

1. Saint Mary's College, "Nursing Programs Secure Enduring Support" (August 2025) — the college's own history of the nursing line: 1861, the 1907 Saint Joseph Hospital school, Sister Maria Amadeo's 1935 baccalaureate and 1949 central school, the 1962 closing, the 1973 re-establishment, the 2022 direct-entry M.S.N.
2. HARC, Archival Reference Guide, building files — Havican Hall renovated for the reinstituted nursing program, 1975.