Cottage Health recently reunited and honored retired nurses and alumnae from the former Knapp College of Nursing at an event featuring a traditional English tea service at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital. This event has been held each year since 2010.
More than 80 retired nurses attended the tea in the hospital’s Burtness Auditorium, including several who graduated from the Knapp College of Nursing in the 1950s and ’60s.
The history of the nursing school at Cottage goes back almost as long as the hospital’s founding 125 years ago.
In the early 1900s, George and Louis Knapp made several major donations to Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital, including the donation in 1923 of a facility and residence hall at 2400 Bath St. for the hospital’s school of nursing.
The name was later changed to Knapp College of Nursing.
The nursing school had a total of 923 graduates, with the majority of them working at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital. In 1968 the Knapp College of Nursing closed its doors and the program was moved to Santa Barbara City College.
Today, the former school site is called the Knapp Building and is the location of the Stewart and Louisa MacDougall Eye Center at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital, along with physician offices.
Cottage Health continues to support nursing education through partnerships with Santa Barbara City College and California State University Channel Islands in Camarillo.
SBCC offers an associate degree in nursing program and clinical educational opportunities for student nurses.
CSUCI and Cottage Health teamed up in 2010 to offer the region’s first bachelor of science in nursing degree. This partnership, which graduated its first nurses in 2014, creates a highly qualified workforce to keep nurses local.
The program’s facility is adjacent to Goleta Valley Cottage Hospital and includes high-tech classrooms, state-of-the-art simulation labs and faculty offices.
For more about Cottage Health, visit www.cottagehealth.org.
— Maria Zate for Cottage Health.