seasons

COLLEGE OF HEALTH SCIENCES
Facilities
UPDATE
At lightning speed, the former Southern Progress properties are being transformed into
state-of-the-art educational and clinical facilities that will serve as home for the College of
Health Sciences. Buildings 1 and 2 span more than 223,000 square feet of space, with over
80,000 square feet undergoing demolition and total renovation. The buildings will open in
fall 2016, and will house the schools of health professions, nursing, pharmacy and public
health, providing students and faculty in those schools the opportunity to learn and work
in an interprofessional environment that mirrors today’s collaborative approach to health
care delivery. On average, approximately 1,200 students from more than 30 programs will
utilize the facility daily.
A highlight of the facilities is a 22,000-square-foot simulation center that offers
discipline-specific and interdisciplinary learning opportunities across the simulation
continuum. Students will engage at a variety of levels — from lab-based learning with
low-fidelity models, to simulated patient interactions, to complex high-fidelity simulations.
Its extensive inventory of task trainers, medium-fidelity models and high-fidelity human
patient simulators creates an optimal learning environment designed to improve technical
skills, clinical judgment, decision making, communication and teamwork.
A 10-bed standardized patient suite and a 1,200-square-foot home-care suite are also a
part of the center. State-of-the-art technology connects the learning environment with the
leading management and performance assessment tools for health care education. The
center utilizes an audiovisual and center management system that allows for live streaming,
video and sound capture of various student learning areas, playback of recorded material,
scheduling, resource utilization and activity reporting. This system allows faculty and
students to review simulated patient interactions and scenarios to improve understanding of
key concepts.
In addition to the simulation center, the College of Health Sciences facilities include
12 clinical and research labs, a chapel, renovated class/seminar rooms, demonstration and
teaching kitchens, student commons areas, and more than 200 employee offices. Sodexo
will operate a Freshens and Starbucks on-site.
According to Vice Provost Nena F. Sanders, the classrooms, clinical laboratory environments
and level of technology incorporated into the facilities will be unparalleled. “You
won’t find a facility like this anywhere else in the country,” said Sanders. “Our students and
faculty will have at their fingertips the most cutting-edge technology and instructional and
simulation resources available. We are confident that these learning spaces will foster
interprofessional education experiences that will prepare graduates to practice collaboratively,
safely and effectively in the ever-evolving health care environment,” she said. ◗
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