University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. School of Medicine. Alumni Office.

The Medical Alumni Office was created to gather records on the alumni of the University of North Carolina's School of Medicine, from the founding of the school in 1879 to its centennial in 1979, and to publish an alumni directory in conjunction with the centennial celebration.

This records group contains copies of materials used by Elizabeth Majette Parker in compiling the Centennial Alumni Directory for the School of Medicine of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Before the directory could be compiled, however, it was necessary to determine what constituted an alumnus of the medical school at Chapel Hill--that is, whether students who attended the one- and two-year courses in medicine from 1880 to 1952 were in fact alumni of the School of Medicine, and whether students who received their medical degrees at the University Medical Department at Raleigh, 1901-1910, also qualified as alumni.

Prior to the centennial celebration of the School of Medicine, during the period when alumni records were being computerized, it was decided that all students who had completed the one- and two-year medical courses, as well as those who received their degrees in Raleigh, would be considered alumni of the medical school and would be listed as such in the alumni records and in the Centennial Alumni Directory. The decision was based on the precedent established in 1954, when Certificates in Medicine were awarded retroactively to students who had completed the one- or two-year medical courses prior to 1942, the first year Certificates in Medicine were given. It was also decided to include students who had studied medicine privately in Chapel Hill while attending the university in 1879-1880.