CMU breaks ground on $26 million extension to Health Professions building
Plans for an expansion of the College of Health Professions Building moved forward with a special groundbreaking ceremony on April 19.
Central Michigan University leaders hosted a groundbreaking ceremony for the Center for Integrated Health Studies outside the Health Professions Building. Construction on the site began in March and will soon become an academic facility for students pursuing health related degrees.
The center, which will provide additional lab and classroom space for the Herbert H. & Grace A. Dow College of Health Professions and the College of Medicine, is being built for $26 million.
The construction of the center will be completed by September 2019. Classes will be offered within the structure in January 2020.
College of Health Professions Dean Thomas Masterson said construction of the college’s Center for Integrated Health Studies comes from a request made 10 years ago.
In an annual meeting with Steve Lawrence, associate vice president of Facilities Management, and other deans, Masterson said the Health Professions building was lacking in space.
“(Lawrence) looked at me like I was speaking some foreign language and laughed,” Masterson said. “He thought I was joking and I wasn’t.”
Construction is being aided by a $19.5 million grant issued by the state.
The building will feature a 256-person auditorium with rearranging seating, a new human physiology teaching lab and additional labs for physical therapy and physician assistant programs.
The building will also feature eight stateless patient exam rooms and two stimulation screens. The stateless patient exam rooms are doctor-patient interaction models, where students can practice medical protocol, behavior and procedure without actual patients.
Senior physician assistant student Fredrick Clifford said the expansion will be beneficial to the future of the university’s PA program.
He said the inter-professional labs will advance the education quality for current students, faculty and future members of CMU’s PA community.
“(Students) will have the opportunity to apply the medicine they learned in the classroom in a low risk, highly real environment,” Clifford said.
President George Ross said the building will be a platform for students to grow together and to improve teamwork skills.
“They will learn and practice together, using the latest methods and latest technology. That is one reason that ‘integrated’ is part of the name,” Ross said.
The structure will add to the “vibrant” presence generated by the Health Professions Building, Ross said, and will better nurture the variety of programs offered by CMU.
“In today’s real world, physicians and health care professionals don’t work in the backroom, Ross said. “Delivering care is a team effort and care teams share responsibility for a patient’s health.”
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