Members of the professional and academic nursing communities recently gathered to commemorate the inauguration of the first-ever South Florida Nursing Archives at Florida International University’s (FIU) Green Library on the University Park Campus.

“By establishing the South Florida Nursing Archives here at FIU, we’ve taken an important step in recording the history of nursing in South Florida for generations to come,” said Divina Grossman, dean of the FIU College of Nursing and Health Sciences. “That history contains invaluable lessons and perspectives on nursing that will benefit not just our FIU Nursing students, but anyone with an interest in the history of the nursing profession in South Florida,” she said, noting that the contents of the archives can be accessed by anyone.

(l-r) Community Health of South Dade Director of Nursing Mae K. Goins with legendary Florida nurses Willie Pearl Porter, 28-year nurse supervisor at Florida A&M Hospital, and Nurses’ Civil Rights trailblazer Thelma Gibson.

The South Florida Nursing Archives, which will be permanently housed at the Green Library, is exclusively dedicated to preserving South Florida’s nursing history. Through Ardalan’s efforts and with funding support from the North Dade Medical Foundation, Health Foundation of South Florida and Infusion Technologies, Inc, the Archives were established to preserve artifacts, documents, photographs, books, notes, tools and many other items that together chronicle more than a century of nursing throughout Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Monroe counties.