Breaking the Mold by Myra Hurt | Page 6

Partners in innovation Myra Hurt, left, and Helen Livingston celebrate after initial provisional accreditation in 2002. (College of Medicine photo archive) FOREWORD HELEN LIVINGSTON Retired associate dean for undergraduate and graduate programs I met Myra Hurt in August 1996 when I interviewed for a position with the Program in Medical Sciences, a one-year medical school experience affiliated with the University of Florida College of Medicine. Myra and I had a few things in common: Both of us are Southern women, both started our careers in high school classrooms, and both often have relied on our Scotch-Irish heritage. Samuel Swett Green, in his 1895 book “The Scotch-Irish in America,” described the character he found among these emigrants to the New World. They possessed good intellectual powers, strong wills, practical sagacity, common sense, tenacity of purpose, self-reliance and a readiness to assert themselves 4 | Breaking the Mold