ALABAMA STATE EDITION
231
65
72 Florence
2
Huntsville
20 Decatur
72
565 59
43
A Supplement to:
231
431
31
5
Gadsden
78 59 Anniston
20
Birmingham Bessemer
82 Tuscaloosa
65 280
20 82 Auburn
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80
85
Selma
Phenix City
Montgomery
82 65
March 29 2017
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43 84 431 331
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Vol. XXX • No. 7
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“The Nation’s Best Read Construction Newspaper… Founded in 1957.”
Dothan
65 98
Mobile
10
Your Alabama Connection • Rich Olivier, Atlanta, GA • 1-800-409-1479
Auburn U. Community Awaits New Facilities By Cindy Riley
Officials at Auburn University are eagerly awaiting completion of a new Health Sciences Sector, which will feature a new nursing school and pharmaceutical research building. The $29 million, 89,000 square-foot nursing facility and the $17 million, 38,000 square-foot Harrison School of Pharmacy structure are strategically located at the corner of South Donahue Drive and Lem Morrison Drive in Auburn, Ala. “The School of Nursing building offers state-of-the-art classrooms and lab spaces,” said Gregg Newschwander, dean of Auburn School of Nursing. “Often, when prospective students come to visit Auburn, they want first to see the simulation spaces. Ours are second to none. In a world where we are challenged to get students sufficient practice with patient management, skill performance and critical thinking and decision making, our simulation space will offer what we can’t guarantee our students in the clinical setting, in an environment just as complex and challenging as the real world. It will definitely help us recruit the best and brightest to Auburn.” University representatives and a number of leaders in health care broke ground on the new School of Nursing building in November 2015. Considered the gateway to the new Health Sciences Sector, the structure will provide spaces specifically designed to foster learning and research initiatives. For those who’ve been involved in the planning, the timing seemed right. “The combination of an aging population and an aging workforce will create a significant nursing shortage in the next 10 years,” said Newschwander. “As schools try to address the impending shortage of nurses, a third variable, the shortage of nursing faculty, comes into play. With the support of the administration, the School of Nursing started increasing the size of our classes about seven years ago. Early on, Auburn Provost Timothy Boosinger declared the new nursing building one of his top five facility priorities. Newschwander said the numbers tell the story. “We admitted 80 undergraduates per year in 2009, and now admit approximately 200 per year. That’s a 250 percent increase. In the graduate program, we’ve gone from about 12 students to over 150 in those seven years, some of which is an effort to ‘grow our own faculty’ to meet the increasing demand. As a result, we have no classroom in Miller Hall that can accommodate any of our cohorts. So, our students are spread across campus, and we’ve lost our sense of community, which really has been frustrating for everyone. We’ve also grown the faculty, and have run out of office space in Miller Hall.” By relocating to a building more than seven times larger than the current structure, the new School of Nursing will have plenty of room. With only 11,700 sq. ft. (1,086.9 sq m), Miller Hall has limited space for faculty offices, two simulation areas and a small auditorium. The new building will have a tiered auditorium, active learning classrooms, a student lounge, public spaces and more than three dozen faculty offices, as well as multiple small rooms for group meetings. Newschwander said the carefully considered location is an ideal fit. “President Gogue has talked about a health sciences complex for as long as I’ve been here, and probably longer. Placing us in close proximity to the pharmacy research building, the medical clinic, the MRI facility and the Via College of Medicine encour-
CEG CORRESPONDENT
see AUBURN page 6
Jordan Tyner, Hoar program management photo
The $29 million, 89,000 square-foot nursing facility and the $17 million, 38,000 squarefoot Harrison School of Pharmacy structure are strategically located at the corner of South Donahue Drive and Lem Morrison Drive in Auburn, Ala.