University of Michigan regents approve construction of new $50M School of Nursing facility
University of Michigan nursing students and faculty will be getting a new $50 million facility, the Board of Regents decided unanimously Thursday.
The school currently operates in a former hospital first built in 1913 and purchased by U-M in 1977. The setup is not conducive to the school's growing student body and faculty and its various simulation exercises, U-M Provost Philip Hanlon told the regents.
"The new kinds of research and new kinds of teaching require a different kind of space than we’re able to construct in their nearly 100-year-old building," Hanlon said.
The school's student body has grown 26 percent in the past 10 years —from 720 students in fall 2001 to 980 students in fall 2011— and it plans to add an additional 40 faculty and staff over the next 10 years.
The new facility will include a clinical learning center with simulation and skill labs, simulated patient suites and some faculty and administrative offices.
It will be located at the intersection of Kingsley Street and North Ingalls Street, near the existing School of Nursing building.
About 125 parking spaces will have to be cleared for the project, possibly making already crunched parking on U-M's medical campus even more scarce. Slottow wrote in a memo that U-M will be "increasing parking in the medical center area and continuing to use transit service."
Kellie Woodhouse covers higher education for AnnArbor.com. Reach her at kelliewoodhouse@annarbor.com or 734-623-4602 and follow her on twitter.
Comments
Meg
Fri, Mar 16, 2012 : 3:23 a.m.
Long overdue. Hooray!
Sparty
Fri, Mar 16, 2012 : 2:35 a.m.
Great news-it's time to replace a 100 year old building while they can leverage economic conditions and put construction people to work, negotiate a strong competitive contract with the developer, etç.
Ron Granger
Fri, Mar 16, 2012 : 1:42 a.m.
Have the regents managed to find the time to appoint an independent outside investigator for that child porn matter?
Kellie Woodhouse
Fri, Mar 16, 2012 : 3:05 a.m.
They haven't announced anything yet. Here's an recent article in the topic: http://www.annarbor.com/news/u-m-hires-project-manager-to-implement-changes-outlined-in-internal-audit-of-6-month-child-porn-repo/ Thanks for reading!
trespass
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 11:51 p.m.
The Regent's meeting is supposed to be an open meeting, so why was I hassled and threatened with a trespass warning for simply and unobtrusively taking pictures at the meeting for my blog. Why were their at least a half dozen police officers at the meeting. Are the Regents getting so paranoid or so tyranical that they need routine police protection at their meetings.