Construction on David A. Straz Jr. Hall is expecting to be completed by this summer. The Marquette Wire had the opportunity to tour the construction site.
The new facility will allow the program to admit 50-100 more students each year.
Jill Guttormson, Dean of the College of Nursing said an evaluation was done on the College of Nursing’s current home, Emory T. Clark Hall, and it was determined that the facility was 30% too small for the current program. She said she hopes the expansion of the program into a new building will encourage students to care for themselves just as much as they care for patients.
From 2020-2023, about 100,000 nurses have left the U.S. workforce due to burnout, retirement or stress. Around 600,000 more nurses are planning to leave by 2027.
Guttormson said the key to keeping nurses in the workforce is self-care.
“When you hear about nurse burnout and challenges in healthcare, the ability to understand how to work as a team and support each other will actually help you out in practice too,” Guttormson said.
During the design process and construction of the building, Guttormson said every decision was evaluated based on their mission for the building.
“We worked with architects and Kurt [the project manager] and we talked about who we were and who we wanted to be as a program,” Guttormson said. “We said ‘student centered, engaged, home away from home and inclusive,’ and they knocked it out of the park. The building became those words.”
The first floor, right off the entrance, will be the student success center for the college which will house academic mental health resources for students. There will also be seating areas all throughout the first floor.
The student lounge area on the second floor was built with commuter students in mind who need somewhere to go between classes. There will also be lockers for students to put their belongings and study rooms for students to reserve.
Near the windows on the second floor, there will be booths for students to study in. There’s also an outdoor terrace for students and staff to utilize.
Guttormson said she hopes the collaborative study spaces throughout the building will foster a sense of community between nursing students of different ages.
The SIM labs and four simulation exam rooms are located on the third floor. The floor houses a mock apartment with a bathroom for students to practice how to take care of patients after they are discharged. Guttormson said the main hallway is built to mock how a hospital hallway would look.
Kurt Young Binter, Senior Project Manager said they chose an architectural firm that has a lot of experience building both higher education buildings and healthcare facilities.
“Architecturally, you look at the building and it fits in, but it’s modern. Buildings don’t have to be collegiate and gothic to be on a college campus,” Binter said. “It’s forward looking,”
On the fifth and sixth floor, there will be respite rooms for students who might need a break, but the floors will also include collaborative places for students to socialize and study. Guttormson said she hopes that with more space in the building, they’ll be able to host more programming events for community building.
Guttormson and Binter said they wanted the fifth and sixth-floor office areas to feel inviting to students, so there will be soft seating outside professor’s offices for students to utilize while they wait for meetings.
For faculty, the fifth floor houses a kitchenette and seating area near their offices.
This story was written by Sophia Tiedge. She can be reached at [email protected].
