The University is trying to change the culture of the health sciences at Emory by designing a cohesive network of facilities for the educators, researchers, and clinicians of the future. That vision involves the creation of a center for integrated patient care delivery, problem-based research, and a new medical education curriculum.

Emory’s 155,000-sf Pediatric Clinic and Research Building, which opened in 2004, underwent the first transformation. The University’s pediatrics department was located on a site designated for expansion. Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, a private hospital, was looking to expand at the same time Emory was planning to upgrade and modernize its pediatrics facilities. The new pediatrics building, which is linked to the hospital by an underground tunnel, contains research and clinical space for 16 subspecialties of pediatrics, serving as a premier example of translational medicine.

The new School of Medicine building was completed in 2007 on the 150th anniversary of the School, becoming the first building to bear the name “School of Medicine” in the University’s history.

“The medical school was housed in a 1970s building connected to two 1920s buildings, none of which was designed with any flexibility in mind or amenities for students,” says Sidney Ward, principal architect at The S/L/A/M Collaborative, which is designing the new School of Public Health.

The new School of Medicine is strictly an instructional building which houses all the academic space for its 300 students, but no faculty offices or library. It contains a coffee shop and café, which are open to the public, as well as student study spaces, small seminar rooms, and even a music practice room.

The Rollins School of Public Health, which is scheduled to open its new facility in 2010, challenges both the traditional research/clinical model and the academic paradigm by changing the way it allocates research space.

In its current location, Public Health houses six departments—including epidemiology, biostatistics, and behavioral sciences—each with its own floor of research space controlled by each department.

“The new model breaks down the walls,” says Mary Jo Olenick, principal and chief of strategic planning at The S/L/A/M Collaborative. “The school will allocate space based on need. This will create synergy among departments and schools.”

Even the School of Medicine, an institution that is traditionally very protective of its space, will have one floor of research space at the Rollins School. This is evidence of Emory’s commitment to rethinking its medical school curriculum to better integrate it with other schools.

“There is a real commitment to graduating students with an MD/MPH, which is a combined medical doctor/masters degree of public health,” says Olenick. “That emphasis on public health makes the school a much more important player in the health sciences.”

“The goal is to have 30 percent of the MDs be MD/MPHs,” adds Ward.

At 30 years old, the Rollins School is a relative newcomer to Emory’s health sciences campus, but it has grown phenomenally to become one of the top 10 schools of its kind in the country.

“It’s a great success story,” says Ward.

The school, which teaches only graduate students, currently is housed in a building less than 20 years old with annex space in adjacent buildings totaling 150,000 sf. The plan is to add 200,000 sf of new space to one of the buildings, and partially renovate the lower three levels of the existing buildings. Some of the existing labs will be decommissioned and moved to the new building.

One of Emory’s goals is to create synergies between schools, departments, and healthcare functions, and the School of Public Health is positioning itself as a catalyst in that process.

“Public health historically takes a more collaborative approach than traditional medical schools,” explains Olenick. “The building is designed to reflect that.

“In creating the new building, it is important to generate spaces where the Rollins School can be the host,” she continues. “They want their building to be a destination.”

Whereas the medical school has an interior courtyard geared toward its own students and faculty, the Rollins facility has a large penthouse event space with panoramic views that can be used to host events for other university departments and the surrounding community.

New Technologies Facilitate Learning

Academic science buildings are becoming more technologically advanced, not only in the design of the buildings themselves, but in the ways they facilitate learning. That is most apparent in the medical school, where robotic simulation has replaced the use of traditional mannequins in three mock hospital rooms and a mock operating suite.

“They’ve always had mannequins that can simulate a heart attack,” says Ward, “but these are not just mannequins. Their pupils dilate and they breathe.”

Behind the scenes of these rooms are technicians with sophisticated computers who put the mannequins through different scenarios that the students have to respond to. The mannequins’ vital signs are monitored and recorded, and the students are videotaped. At the end of a session, students are debriefed about what transpired.

“None of this was possible in the former space,” says Ward.

There also are four standard clinic exam suites, each with four exam rooms. In those rooms, students’ interactions with actor/patients are recorded, then critiqued.

“We’re finding a lot of emphasis on the quality of spaces, the use of technology and sustainable design,” says Olenick. “That drives up the cost of building a regular classroom or office building. As the technology increases, classroom and office buildings will start to cost as much as wet labs.”

Another part of the University’s mission is to promote sustainability in its design.

“Emory University mandates that all new construction be LEED certified,” explains Ward. “The School of Public Health is an opportunity to raise the bar with quality of life being part of the mission.”

Because it is a school of public health, the occupants want to discourage the use of the elevators and encourage people to use the stairs in order to promote physical exercise. To accomplish that, the open central staircase is a major architectural feature that offers good views of the interior spaces.

“It’s the work that matters,” adds Olenick. “These features will continue to develop as we understand the relationship between the environment and the ability of the occupants to do their work effectively.”

The School of Public Health is researching the quality of life generated by its own buildings, and is designing a way to measure it, from the comfort of the classrooms, to how well students see the blackboard. They are trying to measure how the building interacts with people, whether the occupants are more healthy than they are in other buildings, whether there is less absenteeism.

“They are collecting baseline data for us now,” she said. “The building becomes a teaching tool for them.”

Emory’s investments in this new paradigm for the heath sciences are already bearing fruit. In the last 10 years, research funding to Emory has nearly tripled to $359 million, and the School of Medicine has climbed from 31st to 18th in National Institutes of Health rankings.

By Lisa Wesel

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