A Critical Evaluation of the School of Nursing
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Contributor
Tate Archives & Special Collections
Contributor Institution
Illinois Wesleyan University
Creation Date
1970
Document Type
Report
Description
“A Critical Evaluation of the School of Nursing” is a Manual written by the Faculty of the School of Nursing in 1970. This manual overview's the creation of the Brokaw Hospital program and the five components' students must show in the professional program. Those being competence, social understanding, professional personality, enthusiasm for study and research awareness. This manual also includes the curricular requirements for nursing students, qualifications necessary for faculty appointments and promotions, the overview of the department budget including (Financial aid, tuition, and the upcoming Stevenson Hall building fund). Within the section for professors this evaluation overviews the qualifications, community activities, and course offered of every professor currently employed within the Nursing School.
Primary Source Analysis
In 1970 The Nursing Faculty got together to write a manual titled ‘A Critical Evaluation of the School of Nursing’. This manual unveils the Nursing programs aspirations, philosophy and requirements future students must hold to graduate at Wesleyan. The Nursing faculty throughout this manual mention different facets of the nursing school such as the components of the professional program, qualifications for faculty or staff, and requirements for the Nursing degree. All of these facets help contextualize the training of nurses at Wesleyan in the years to follow 1970 as well as guide the principles the next generation of nurses is to follow. In our class this semester we truly focused on the notion of nurses talking care. In other words, how nurses throughout history have utilized remedies, knowledge of the craft, and different practices in order to restore someone to health. This manual helps us expand this idea of talking care because of its unique exploration of the philosophy within nursing. Students within Wesleyan as the faculty describes should have “professional competence, social understanding, professional personality, enthusiasm for study, and research awareness”. A philosophy based on not only skill but also social aspects of nursing really plays on this notion of ‘talking care’. IWU nurses have had a long history of taking care, one example from further research is the participation in the Brokaw Hospital program up until 1958. This program helped train IWU nurses before the school of Nursing officially moved into the newly built location on campus. While looking at the History of the Brokaw Program I also made sure to look at financial data during the 1970s to see how investment in the study of Nursing changed. By looking at financial data we can now contextualize the typical students financial aid, tuition as well as see the Stevenson building fund which would forever change studying nursing. This connects to the exploration of the manual written by the nursing faculty since it expands the story of how nursing became an official program and major, and how the program's philosophy in ‘taking care’ never changed. By choosing a manual reflecting the School of Nursing during the 1970s we are able to look back on so much more history such as the Brokaw program and the financial pushes that helped give nurses a chance to emerge out of college ready to help.
Rights
For rights information, contact Tate Archives & Special Collections at archives@iwu.edu.