Spring Break
Nursing to get new space in prep for OE renovation
Addie Shrodes
Issue date: 5/11/09 Section: WCC News
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Building (OE) to the revamped TI space.
The move is motivated by the need for an OE renovation, a more than $14 million project that will start in late Fall.
"OE is in need of repair, and to repair some things you have to move other things out so the programs can continue," said Granville Lee, dean of Health and Applied Technology.
"I've got to get nursing out of OE before I can renovate OE, so this is musical chairs," said Damon Flowers, associate vice president of Facilities Development and Operations.
Nursing and Health Science and Pharmacy Technology will move to a 12,000-square-foot space on the north side of TI overlooking Lot 4. But although the move is driven by the renovation in OE, the TI space will be a considerable improvement for the programs.
"Nursing has been in OE for almost 30 years, ever since it was built in 1980, so the space is obsolete," Flowers said. "In TI, they will have a larger space by about 1,000 square feet and they will have an additional lab."
Nursing faculty are eager to move into a larger space.
"Because our labs are for practicing, more space would be great - we need more space," said Gloria Velarde, chair of the Nursing and Health Science Department.
But the larger space will not guarantee the ability to accommodate more of the 100 or so students on the registered-nursing-program waitlist. For the two-year program, which admits 40 students in the Fall and 40 in the Winter to total more than 200 students at a given time, the limit is not a space issue.
"The bottleneck is at the clinical sites," Lee said. "Hospitals have certain requirements on how many students we can send."
However, the new space will allow for a student-increase in the nursing transfer program, in which students get an associate's in applied science degree before transferring to complete a bachelor's degree in nursing. For 13 years, the college has had an articulation agreement with the University of Michigan, which admits 16 students per Fall Semester. But recently, WCC signed an articulation agreement with
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