Health Professions Building opens

By Theresa Pratt, contributing writer

The College of Health Professions building, which is worth $175 million and has been under construction since 2021, is now open. 

Located on University Avenue near the College of Liberal Arts building, the new Health Professions building features 10 specialty labs, 10 patient exam rooms, eight speech and audiology research labs, and six simulation labs. 

Walter Dearborn, lecturer for the Department of Health Sciences, shared that he is most excited to see an increase in students and staff members working together.

“I thought it was beautiful. It was really well done…Bigger classroom sizes, which is great for more tables and chairs. Students don’t have to feel so crammed,” said Dearborn.

Another staff member, Susan Casciani, senior lecturer and internship coordinator for the Health Care Management program, echoed the same sentiments.

“It’s huge. The interior has an absolutely huge atrium and lots and lots of light…My favorite part of the building are all of the spaces that are available throughout the building for people to just sit, relax and be together,” said Casciani.

In the 240,000 square foot building, two of the classrooms can seat 120 people. They were designed to have multiple levels, with each level having at least two rows. This allows the people in the front to turn around and work with people behind them. The building also has a 350 seat auditorium with three different screen monitors and two entry levels. 

Some other spaces in the building have technology in them that enables the professor to stand in the middle of the space and project their material to every workstation in the room. A student can take the content on their device and project it around the room too.

In the rooms designated for specialty purposes, one of them is an occupational therapy room. 

“It’ll be set up like a playroom or gym but there are also hooks in the wall or in the ceiling so they can set up swings,” Dennis Shepard, the outreach, marketing, and events coordinator for the College of Health Professions, said.

“There is also equipment in the back that they bring out that can be used for children with disabilities or if they’ve had some kind of injury or trauma to help them work through their motor skills and do therapy with them in a play-like setting,” Shepard said. 

The building also has a couple of simulation spaces to help students gain more experience that they can use once graduated. During a tour of the primary simulation space, Assistant Professor and Simulation Coordinator Susan King shared more details.

“Throughout the curriculum, we run a simulation to ring the classroom in a clinical, kind of glue, that makes them come to life and here is where we want students to make a mistake,” King said.

In the simulation rooms, there are mannequins that have the ability to mimic actions such as breathing, crying, urinating, experiencing cardiac dysrhythmia and seizing. Students also attend briefing and debriefing meetings surrounding these experiences.

Other features that the building has include healthier air circulation methods, desks that can change height levels for professors, rooftop garden spaces and a cafe. With the building being created to tie nature and health together. This can be seen through the large use of natural lighting, bamboo and wood in the building.

The ribbon-cutting ceremony for the building is scheduled to happen on Sept. 12.

An earlier version of this article claimed Walter Dearborn was a faculty supervisor and that the simulation mannequins were controlled by a $2.5 million recording system. These statements were incorrect and they have been updated. The Towerlight regrets this error.