For criminal justice major Brady Hood, one good thing about the health center being outsourced is more space for the college of health and human services.
“I think it’ll be good for [health and] human services to have an actual building they can have classes in,” Hood said.
The college of health and human services is one of the fastest growing programs at the University, with a growth of about 300 students in the past three years, and it currently shares the health center’s building, said Rodney Rogers, senior vice president of academic affairs and University provost. Once the health center moves to a new building on Wooster Street in the fall, the construction will begin to expand the college so it occupies more of the building, Rogers said.
“Health care related fields have just been continually growing. We think that will continue to grow,” Rogers said. “Our hope is to ensure the college is in a position to continue its growth.”
Even though the University is aware of the need to expand the college’s space, it’s all in the planning stages, said Christopher Dunn, interim dean of the college of health and human services.
Giving the college more space will allow for more of the college’s programs to move into the building, more classrooms and more student meeting space, Dunn said.
“Student experience is one of the first priorities we have in renovations and new additions if it happens,” Dunn said. “One, bring medical labs over and two, increase student space.”
Since the medical laboratory science program began, the medical labs have been located in the Life Science Building, where they share biology lab space, Dunn said. Now, they will move with the rest of the college into the health center building.
The building will be renovated to outfit the labs with new technology, Rogers said.
“They’ll have state of the art facilities,” he said.
The amount of space for students to hang out in will also be increased, Dunn said. Right now there is little to no space for students to congregate, but Dunn is hoping there will be more when the building is remodeled, he said.
“[We hope to create] open space in the health center,” Dunn said. “[A] large space where students can congregate before class or after meetings … [It’ll help] make college much more student friendly.”
The college of health and human services isn’t the only academic college whose programs will potentially occupy the building, Rogers said.
“There may be additional programs complimentary to the college of health and human services,” he said. “One suggestion is food and nutrition … but it hasn’t been totally decided.”
This will probably be the first area of its kind, bringing programs together in this way, Rogers said.
“It will probably the first one that will be completed,” he said. “We begin to think about students interacting with each other who have common interests. I think there’s a lot of power in getting people talking to each other. I think there’ll be great synergy.”
In order to bring programs together and allow for more space for the college of health and human services, the building will need to be expanded, Rogers said.
“We think we’ll need to enhance the size of the building a little bit,” Rogers said. “[Probably] a modest expanse of the footprint of the building.”
