Nursing education at the University of South Carolina began in 1942 as part of a national effort to meet the nursing needs of a nation at war. The nursing program originated as a small department within Arts and Sciences. An autonomous school of nursing was founded in 1957, under its first dean Amy Viglione, and students were admitted to the new four-year bachelor of science in nursing program in 1958. With the addition of a master's program in 1971, the school became the College of Nursing. These and other shifts in the mission, programs, research, and degrees spanning the sixty-three-year history of the nursing program are recorded in detail in ""A Legacy of Caring"".