Purdue leaders, along with their supporters, sought approval from the Indiana General Assembly to operate their own schools of medicine in Marion County. Following a lengthy multi-month debate, Purdue president Winthrop E. Stone relented. In April 1908 IU and Purdue reached an agreement that consolidated IUSM in Bloomington; the State College of Physicians and Surgeons in Indianapolis; and the Indiana Medical College, the School of Medicine of Purdue University and retained the name Indiana University School of Medicine. On February 26, 1909, the state legislature formally authorized IU to operate a medical school in Marion County and clearly mandated that IU assume total responsibility for the state's public medical school. The state legislature's authorization allowed IU to operate its own medical school in Marion County and enabled IU's medical students to complete all four years of their medical education in Indianapolis or remain in Bloomington for their first year before transferring. Early leadership and enrollment Dr. Allison Maxwell agreed to serve as the first dean of the four-year IU School of Medicine in Indianapolis in April 1908; he remained as its dean until 1911. Maxwell led the fledgling school through a difficult time when financial budgets were an issue and the consolidation of IU's and Purdue's medical school faculties in Indianapolis and Bloomington was completed. The combined faculty would support the four-year medical school at Indianapolis and maintain the two-year, pre-clinical coursework at Bloomington. In addition to Maxwell, other leaders in IUSM's early history were drawn from Johns Hopkins University, including Charles P. Emerson who was appointed as the second dean of IUSM in 1911 and served in that role until 1931. Willis Dew Gatch became the third dean of the medical school in 1932. In 1909, Gatch invented the Gatch adjustable hospital bed, which used a crank to raise and lower the patient's head and feet. John D. VanNuys, a 1936 graduate of IUSM, became its fourth dean in 1947. Amelia R. Keller, department of pediatrics, was the sole woman on the clinical faculty of the IU Medical School in Indianapolis after the school's consolidation with the Purdue School of Medicine in 1908. IUSM graduated its first class of twenty-seven students and conferred its first Doctor of Medicine degree in May 1907. The first graduation of the consolidated IU and Purdue schools of medicine took place the following year. IUSM's first black student, Clarence Lucas, graduated in 1908; the