Professional nursing underwent a cataclysm of change during the active years of the Student Health Coalition.  From the beginning, students in the Coalition nurtured those changes.  Without a political agenda at least at first, young nurses and nursing students who joined the Coalition embraced a fundamental mission to build a practice based on the needs of the communities.  As their embrace brought them up against opposition from existing health care culture and state and federal law, they helped to craft action plans to change culture and law.  Eventually, nurses, alongside their medical, legal, and community partners, became powerful spokespeople for community health needs, including the need to expand existing nurse practice paradigms.