Dr. Sylvia Hart joined the UT faculty in 1971 as professor of nursing and dean of the newly established College of Nursing. Born in Milwaukee, Hart received the BSN from Alverno College. For the next 10 years, she was a staff nurse and head nurse at a Milwaukee hospital. She left Milwaukee to work toward the MSN at Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. She taught in the Washington area for a few years and then pursued the doctorate degree in nursing at New York University. Then she taught briefly at NYU.
When she came to UT to start a new College of Nursing, the college consisted in its entirety of two offices in Temple Court. In 1975 Hart was the driving force in the approval of a federal grant that provided funds to construct the nursing building.
The nursing honorary society, Sigma Theta Tau, annually gives the Sylvia Hart Award to a graduating senior who shows greatest promise for excellence in practice, and the Sylvia Hart Scholarships in the College of Nursing provide recognition of academic excellence at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.