As the need became apparent for trained nurses and personnel, a nurses' home was built and the Dorothea Dix School of Nursing opened in 1902 with eight female students. It continued until October 1913 when the school was reorganized and arrangements were made for the students to receive the second year of their education at Bellevue Hospital in New York City. The first class graduated in June 1915. The school was incorporated as Dix Hill Hospital Training School for Nurses, in 1916. Anderson Hall was built to accommodate the school offices, classrooms and living quarters for student nurses in 1918.

During the year 1930 the School of Nursing was brought up to the standards required by the Standardization Board, the accrediting agency for schools of nursing in North Carolina. The school for nurses at the State Hospital was reincorporated as the Dorothea Dix School of Nursing in 1933. The student nurses received two years' training in the hospital and in their third year affiliated with a general hospital which made them eligible for the North Carolina state examinations and for reciprocity with other states.

In 1936 the Dorothea Dix School of Nursing was operating according to the standards set by the North Carolina Board of Nursing. Students received the second year of their education at the General Hospital of the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond. That same year the Dorothea Dix School of Nursing began to offer a three-month affiliation in psychiatric nursing for senior students in approved nursing schools.

During World War II the Dorothea Dix School of Nursing became a member of the U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps, increasing student enrollment by sixty percent. The annex, which was the nurses' home in the forties, was completed in January, 1946. In the forties the student nurses traveled to Morisania Hospital in New York City for their second year of education. After the war, the number of student nurses decreased so much that the nursing education program was discontinued with the last class graduating in 1949. At that time, the affiliation in psychiatric nursing was still being offered to students who had completed 21 months of the basic nursing course from approved schools of nursing, and sixty student nurses arrived at the hospital for a three month affiliating period in psychiatric nursing.