DUSON Featured in Duke Today Article
Duke University School of Nursing was recently featured in an article entitled "Meet the Women Behind the Building Names" published by Duke Today.
When the Duke University School of Nursing opened in 1931, it was led by Bessie Baker, the school’s first dean. By the time she arrived at Duke, Baker had put together a long career in the field, dispensing care at Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins Hospital and at a hospital in France during World War I. She was also a professor at the University of Minnesota.
But at Duke, Baker excelled as the steady leader of the new school, helping recruit students and serving as a liaison with Duke leadership. She retired in 1938.
Baker House, which is now part of the sprawling Duke University Hospital complex and home to Duke’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, was constructed in 1930 and served as a home for Duke’s nursing students. In 1943, after Baker’s death, the building was named for her.
When she started at Duke in 1987, Alice Cooper, the medical director for the ambulatory clinics of Duke Obstetrics and Gynecology, also a women’s health nurse practitioner, worked on the third floor of Baker House.
“It speaks to her leadership skills and the things that she was able to accomplish, back in the 30s, as a woman, and a nurse, to be influential enough to have a building named after her,” Cooper said. “What a great path she laid down for the rest of us that came after her.”
Other buildings named after women with ties to the Duke University School of Nursing include the Hanes House, named for former nurse and donor Elizabeth Hanes, and the Pearson Building, named after Duke graduate and donor Christine Siegler Pearson.