 Nourse has traditionally been considered one of the founders of Jinling College, a women's school in Nanjing, based on her having been one of the signatories of a petition circulated in 1911-1912 calling for a women's college in the Yangtze River valley.Nourse was also among the school's six-member faculty when it opened on September 17, 1915, teaching psychology and history to an entering class of 11 students.Women's education had been encouraged by an imperial decree in 1907, but Jinling was the first women's college to open in China.