The School of Nursing expanded quickly over its brief history. The first classes at Texas Tech were part of the Continuing Nursing Education Program, which began in 1979. Then, in the Fall of 1981, the first students with no prior nursing education were admitted into Tech's baccalaureate nursing degree program at the Lubbock Health Sciences campus. This was the only BA nursing program in Texas where students receive immediate nursing instruction in clinical areas.

In the Fall of 1985, the program expanded to a second campus at Permian Basin. The rapid growth continued to expand in the level of nursing education that could be achieved at Texas Tech. In 1988, a graduate program began. In 1992, in collaboration with the University of Texas Health Sciences Center in San Antonio, a doctoral program began.

At this time, the School of Nursing boasts forty-plus nursing faculty, all of whom are involved in clinical practice as well as teaching duties, programmatic level research activities, and over 500 hundred students at all levels of education.