Prior to her retirement from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga at the end of the 2024-25 academic year, the School of Nursing celebrated Dr. Cherry Guinn—who spent 40 years on the UTC faculty—at its April 2025 NightinGala event.
As part of the NightinGala festivities, Guinn, Professor Emeritus Martha Butterfield and Professor Emeritus Barbara Norwood sat down with the UTC video team to reminisce about the founding of the University’s School of Nursing.
Martha Butterfield: “We started working on trying to get a program here at the University back in 1968, and it took a while of course, and Mary Jackson was hired as the first director and she came in in ’73 and we hired Barb (Norwood) and then we started developing the curriculum and accepting our students for the first class.”
Barbara Norwood: “I knew clinical and I knew it well and when they told me this is the way the curriculum was needed to go, makes sense to me.”
Butterfield: “The whole idea of having the bachelor’s degree as the entry into the profession was a foreign idea in Tennessee, so we had a lot of people who were very skeptical and afraid of what was going to happen, so we had to be good.”
Cherry Guinn: “We were the gateway for you to go into the profession, so we were very strict about what the students learned and how they learned it and how they did in clinical.”
Norwood: “We accepted a class of 60 in January and that 60 went through one course. They didn’t take this course one semester; they went straight through. Back then, we had for them, we had what we call challenge exams and they took those challenge exams and if they passed the challenge exam, they got credit for that course. Quite frankly, very few passed. They thought they could just swing in and the fact that they had been doing med-surg for 10 years, that they could pass an OB test didn’t really work so well for them. They persevered and stayed with us. They wanted that baccalaureate degree.”
Norwood: “I had a ceramic jar and that ceramic jar had on it ‘Ashes of Problem Students.’ And so when students would come in and they were talking about how fabulous they thought they were and trying to convince me of it, I could just take that little jar and just turn it so that they could see the label that said ‘Ashes of Problem Students.’ You would see them look at it and their eyes get a little bit big. They suddenly decided that maybe their issue wasn’t quite as important as I thought it was and they would sing tomorrow.”
Butterfield: “I think seeing our first class graduate, and as we started the RN-to-BSN program and how many of the nurses in the community came and took part in the program and graduated from the program, I think that was a very special thing.”
Guinn: “I think part of what I’ve seen changed in my tenure here was simulation became a very real viable option to apply what you were learning in class.”
Norwood: “I remember being told, not asked that, yes, you are going to go to Metro. There’s nobody else in that whole building. But there was a hospital bed and a mannequin in it, and the mannequin couldn’t do a whole lot, not much of anything. As a matter of fact, I would breathe for it. But that was the start of the simulation program.”
Guinn: “Here we would have this mannequin called whoever she was, and we would take it through every single clinical like you have in med-surg. That was the first course. Then you’d go into OB and peds and then you go back to a med-surg and we had preceptorship and different things going on, so it became part. We learned how to be pretty good mannequins overall.”
Norwood: “The concept of a safe hospital where the simulation is where things can go terribly wrong, you can let it come to its natural fruition without intervening and telling the student, ‘Wait, stop. You can’t do that.’ But done right, you’ll see the students have the same emotional response as a real-life situation if you do it right.”
Guinn: “But you also are taking measures to work with a student when they go through all those emotions, too. You just don’t say, ‘OK, we’re done.’ You have to kind of debrief and work with them.”
Butterfield: “I remember back when we first started, it was very simple, the routine, and now we have moved more to the simulations and the things that the students are able to do in the labs that we used to have to do in the clinical area. I think they have a lot more confidence coming into the clinical area.”
Norwood: “I’m proud of where that has come from because I really had a lot of hesitation because I didn’t know how to do that and nobody else did either, and there wasn’t an instruction book. So it has really come a long, long way.”
Butterfield: “To see what we started with Barbara and where it is now. It’s just beyond my comprehension almost to see the explosion.”
Norwood: “It started what, in two rooms and a closet up in Race Hall.”
Butterfield: “We were booted around all over campus. That’s why the new building is so exciting. We have our own place.”
Guinn: “I want the students to be proud of where they went to school because they’re part of that legacy now. UTC is rated like No. 1, and they live it out when they take their jobs and when they do their clinical.”
Butterfield: “It’s also interesting to be a patient in a hospital and have a former student come in and see you and say they feel like they have to be on their toes.”
Norwood: “I think I would say that if you’re in it for the monetary reward, you need to consider something else.”
Butterfield: “I think you’d be the best you can. Be proud of where you’ve come from. This is a great program and anybody who graduates so much should be proud and carry their head up high.”
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