The Wake Forest era and the two-year school: 1902-1941. (Editorial).

For Wake Forest University, the history of medical education began 100 years ago-not in Winston-Salem, but in the Wake County community of Wake Forest, near the North Carolina state capital of Raleigh. The parent institution, Wake Forest Institute, was founded by the Baptist State Convention, opening in February 1834 as a young men's seminary, exclusively for the education of ministers. Rechartered in 1838 as Wake Forest College, the school remained primarily a liberal arts institution for men until the School of Law opened in 1894.

By 1849, interest was arising in the establishment of a medical department at Wake Forest College. The lack of medical training in North Carolina made it necessary for students to follow this pursuit in the northern states, depriving their home state of the presence of both the students and their dollars. Wake Forest College Medical School did not open until 1902, however, when 13 students enrolled in the 2-year program, paying tuition of $37.50 per semester for that privilege. The medical department was crowded into a portion of the Alumni Building after its completion in 1905, and remained there until the William Amos Johnson Medical Building was erected in 1932. During the earliest years, the medical school's pathology laboratory occupied the basement of the Wake Forest College gymnasium.

The first dean of the medical school (1902-1905) was Fred K. Cooke, MD, an army surgeon who insisted on maintaining the highest standards of scholarship. Poor health forced his resignation in 1905, and his successor; Watson S. Rankin, MD, served as dean until 1909. Dr. Rankin's awareness that far too many practicing physicians were unqualified anchored his philosophy that the school should be known for the high quality of the students who graduated from it. His steadfastness was rewarded when Wake Forest Medical School joined only 3 other Southern medical schools as members in both the Association of American Medical Colleges and the New York Board of Regents. At least in part because of the excellent reputation he gained at Wake Forest, Dr. Rankin was asked by the state in 1909 to become the first fulltime secretary of the North Carolina Board of Health.

For most of the next decade, the medical school operated without a dean, with the faculty reporting directly to the president of the college. But in 1919, Thurman D. Kitchin, MD, began a long tenure (1919-1936) as medical dean, during which the school was repeatedly threatened with extinction. Like other 2-year medical schools, the Wake Forest program struggled to stay afloat, and the reputation it enjoyed for quality education, upheld by Dr. Kitchin, was a key factor in its survival.

The last dean at the old campus was Coy C. Carpenter, MD, who began serving in 1936. Under his watch, dramatic changes would occur: development into a 4-year medical school, relocation to another city; a name change that would endure for more than 5 decades, and establishment as an integral component of a major medical center.

Donna S. Garrison, PhD

Publications Manager

Office of the Dean Wake Forest University School of Medicine 

Winston-Salem, NC 27157