Вирджиния выделила 115 млн долларов на расширение здания колледжа здравоохранения Вирджинского университета

The Virginia General Assembly passed a new state budget allocating nearly $150 million to expand JMU’s nursing and healthcare programs. The majority of that budget — $115.3 million — will go to expanding the College of Health and Behavioral Studies (CHBS) building, according to JMU. “I really am grateful for the support of JMU’s administration and the legislature in Virginia for approving the funding for the building; it’s needed,” CHBS Dean Sharon Lovell said. “We need this building, and I’m glad that we’re at this point.” After years of planning, 34th District Virginia Delegate Tony Wilt said he hopes the building will provide JMU the capacity to educate more nurses, adding that more space allows more students to come off the school’s waitlist and more nurses to combat the healthcare worker shortage in Virginia. “JMU’s got an outstanding reputation of producing healthcare workers that are ready to go to work, they know what they’re doing and they’re prepared,” he said. “It’s a win-win for the whole state.” About the expansion The expansion encompasses a proposed five-story building adjacent to the current CHBS building with a bridge connecting the two, according to the construction company working on the project, Barton Malow. Director of engineering and construction Kirk Morris wrote in an emailed statement to The Breeze that the demolition of the Cantrell Avenue Parking Deck and utility relocation will begin this fall. The project is planned to be completed in spring 2027. Morris added that the CHBS building should be open to the public by fall 2029. Demolition of the Cantrell Avenue faculty parking deck will begin this fall, with the deck’s last day of operation Aug. 14, according to JMU’s website. This closure resulted in the reallocation of the Grace Street Parking Deck to faculty parking and the fifth level of the Mason Street Parking Deck to students, the website read. With the addition of a second building, director of nursing Melody Eaton said the new CHBS building will add nursing simulation labs, competency-based labs, health assessment labs, conference rooms for debriefing and study areas. The labs will help ensure students gain their 500 clinical hours because students can earn a percentage of them through the simulations, Eaton said. Eaton said the nursing program sends around 480 students to community hospitals within an hour radius for clinical placements. With the addition of the simulation labs, it still enhances students’ knowledge, but it won’t overwhelm the hospitals. “Our clinical partners across the state love our graduates from JMU,” Eaton said. “They know they’re prepared for practice, and in this healthcare system, it pays to be practice-ready. We have a pretty complex healthcare system that our students go out into, whether you’re in nursing or any health profession.” In addition to the new labs, the new CHBS will alleviate the building’s capacity after the nursing program had moved into CHBS. “We outgrew [CHBS] right after we moved into it with the expansion in nursing,” Eaton said. “We’ve expanded faculty to meet student needs. We expanded our student population in 2020.” Expanding the nursing program Beyond seeing the nursing student and faculty population grow at JMU, Eaton said the School of Nursing added a Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) Fast Flex Pathway that helped with the CHBS expansion. The BSN-Fast Flex pathway is an alternative to the traditional BSN, which requires two summer sessions, evenings, and weekends during the fall and spring semesters; it can be completed in a faster time frame while maintaining the same high-quality education as the traditional option, according to JMU’s website. The nursing program isn’t the only program offered at the CHBS, and there will be additions to the new CHBS building that will help other programs, Lovell said. Lovell said those additions include the ability to admit more students into programs, provides more spaces for labs for research, teaching and provide opportunities for interdisciplinary and interprofessional learning and clinics for students and the JMU community. “It allows for better and improved experiences for students,” Lovell said. “It gives us space to allow students to interact with each other and with faculty in ways they just haven’t been able to in the past. There are so many positives that come along with this building.” Students’ thoughts on expansion Students like senior nursing major Nick Woodson said this expansion is necessary for the future of the CHBS as the college grows. “I think it’s a necessary expansion if the colleges are still wanting to expand, which, based on how many people they’re admitting every year, it seems like they want to,” he said. Senior social work major Ainsley Roberts also said this expansion is needed, especially for social work majors, adding that there’s already significant overflow and overcrowding in her classes. “CHBS is home to a lot of majors and it’s nice to just be able to have all of your classes in one place,” senior social work major Emma Stanley said. “All of the helping professions, it’s nice to just have all of that in one place.” Though Woodson said nursing students haven’t felt the effects of overcrowding in classrooms — due to regulations on the number of students admitted to the major — he added that they’ve felt the impacts in finding lab space to practice skills and perform simulations. The building provides space to dozens of classes for health professions and this expansion, sophomore business major Jake Easton said, will give students more space to learn and practice these skills. “It’s going to be a big change for this school. There’s already a ton of classes in [CHBS] and important classes, too … and it’s just going to make it easier, more classes, more openings for new students to have more opportunities to take these classes that are very meaningful,” Easton said. However, Roberts said, though the construction will be beneficial, the current effects on parking have exacerbated issues with commuter parking at JMU. “The overflow of parking has been crazy with traffic, and the fact that I’m looking out of my classrooms and there’s open spots in Grace is really unsettling,” she said. Easton said though he hopes the parking issues are fixed quickly, getting to classes is still achievable through alternative modes of transportation. “You can walk to school. Park in the hotel. There’s more parking decks, but it’ll just be a longer walk,” he said.