The old layout made it difficult to achieve these objectives. The School of Nursing previously occupied three adjacent structures?built in 1922, 1954, and 1970?and temporary quarters on a suburban campus 10 miles away. The new facility consolidates the entire school into one state-of-the-art building that serves more than 1,300 undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students.

"Our new building integrates teaching, research, and clinical practice into one contiguous space," says Lesley Perry, associate professor, executive associate dean, and associate dean for administrative services. "We wanted to change the way teaching was done."

The $38-million project includes the renovation of 15,000 sf in the 1970 building, which is now linked to the new structure. The layout of the entire facility is designed to support what Perry calls the school's "integrated scholar model."

Changing Space, Changing Teaching Methods

The first level of the new seven-story building contains the public spaces, such as a 470-seat auditorium and an atrium, which is used for functions serving as many as 500 or more people. The second floor is the main teaching area, an entire wing of which is dedicated to distance learning.

One of the major design shifts is a reduction in the number of large lecture halls, which in the old building seated as many as 225 students. Professors now teach in smaller classrooms that allow for more interaction with their students. The largest lecture hall seats 150 students, with most classrooms holding between 30 and 40. Four conference rooms accommodate groups of 20 to 25, while the four seminar rooms seat 15 to 18.

The new School of Nursing classrooms are outfitted with technology that offers almost unlimited possibilities. Customized teaching stations in each classroom contain computers that provide access to the Internet as well as the school-wide network, where digitized videos, computer-assisted teaching materials, and class files containing lecture notes and assignments are stored. Faculty can display these during class using an LCD projector. Each classroom also contains an overhead document camera.

Perhaps most significantly, all the technology is standardized throughout the building. Anything the professors can access in their classrooms and their offices, students can access in the computer labs, seminar rooms, conference rooms, and simulation labs.

"One of the challenges on occupying our new building was the move from typical stand alone audio-video equipment to a system where everything was integrated through our computer network." Perry says.

Another challenge has been living up to the students' growing expectations. They have become accustomed to accessing the class files just before class to print out the lecture notes. This gives them the chance to write less in class and more carefully review afterwards. If professors don't post their notes in advance, they hear about it from their students, Perry says.

These physical changes necessitated pedagogical changes. Professors who were used to lecturing to students needed to revise their methods when they found themselves in smaller classrooms where the students expected to interact with them. They also needed to learn to use the new technology to enhance their presentations and make their courses more interactive.

Training prior to move-in helped instructors transition to the new systems. An on-going program of professional development continues to educate faculty in the use of technology and distance learning systems. In addition, the school recently received a grant called "Teaching with Technology," which concentrates on preparing faculty to teach using a variety of technologies, including Web-based teaching.

The technology also allowed the school to expand and refine its distance-learning program, which transmits 50 to 60 hours of classes a week to five sites across Maryland. One program is entirely Web-based.

Integration Offers Better Educational Opportunities

Previously, faculty offices were scattered among the three main buildings, and the clinical simulation labs were consolidated on one floor, which meant they were not linked with the departments.

The new building brings all the functions associated with a single department together on one floor. Floors three through six each house one of the school's four departments: adult health; child, women, and family health; behavioral and community health; and administration, health policy, and informatics. (Informatics is a combination of computer science and nursing, which concentrates on the computer information systems that support healthcare.)

Each floor contains faculty offices, clinical simulation labs, research space, seminar rooms, and conference rooms. Locating each department on one floor has gone a long way toward providing more contact among students and faculty with related specialties, Perry says. But the designers of the building took the concept one step further. Instead of lining the halls with faculty offices, they created faculty suites, each containing four offices for professors who share an area of interest, such as geriatrics or adult primary care. The suites also contain cubicles for research assistants and support staff, and a round table for small meetings.

"This setup improves the faculty's ability to interact informally with each other and with students," Perry says. "Students in a particular specialty tend to get together anyway."

Faculty are particularly enthusiastic about the research space provided in the new building. Fully one quarter of the building, about 38,500 sf, is dedicated to faculty research. Wet labs are concentrated on the top floor to minimize the ductwork that accompanies standard ventilation hoods. Each department also has research labs on its own floor; for example, behavioral research labs with observation rooms, biofeedback labs, physiology labs with exercise equipment, and health policy research labs with computers for data research.

Clinical Simulation Labs For Safe Practical Experience

The school's 24 clinical simulation labs are a hallmark of the new building, says Perry, who calls them "the best type of teaching lab that our campus has." These labs are contained on each department floor, as well as on the second floor of the building.

"These labs are set up to simulate what students will find in their clinical environment," she continues. "Our thinking is that students need to practice in a safe environment. They need to be able to make mistakes where it doesn't count, and they need to be able to gain their basic clinical skills in this practice environment before they go and take care of real patients."

Each lab is designed to look and feel as much like the real thing as possible, complete with IV poles, defibrillators, ventilators, and floor-to-ceiling power columns to which all the utilities are connected (electricity, oxygen, suction).

The critical care labs have five or six beds with sophisticated mannequins incorporating computers that replicate various health conditions. The neonatal care labs have incubators with infant-sized mannequins that give students the opportunity to practice intubations before having to do it on a live child. The health assessment labs have five or six examination tables with the same bedside equipment the students would find in a hospital.

Beside the beds are computers networked within the school and connected to the Internet. Students can use them during a lab if they need to review a computer-assisted teaching program or to see a digitized instructional video. They also can research more in-depth information from the Internet before they leave the lab.

The behavioral and community health department has a totally different kind of clinical simulation lab because those students specialize in home-based care. Those labs are designed to look like the apartments that a home health care nurse might visit. They are outfitted with mannequins to examine, but they also have students and faculty role-playing as patients.

The administration, health policy, and informatics labs are set up for computer research and data collection.

Undergraduates spend the first semester in these labs before they see any real patients, Perry says. They return to the labs periodically throughout their training to learn more sophisticated skills.

Although the school does not yet have statistics to document the success of these labs, Perry has plenty of anecdotal evidence that attests to their value.

"Students tell us they feel more comfortable when they have to take care of patients, and employers are very satisfied with our students' skills," she says. "Without these labs, they would be overwhelmed or unprepared when it came time to care for very ill patients."

The labs are so effective that they are used by students from the university's other professional schools, such as physical therapy, pharmacy, and medicine. The teaching has become as collaborative as the use of the physical space. The nursing faculty, for example, teach pharmacy students about administering medicines to patients. This collaboration offers nursing students the opportunity to work with students in other disciplines, and also allows graduate students and undergraduates to work together.

"These clinical simulation labs are not unique among nursing schools," Perry says. "But very few have the scope of laboratories we have or are attempting to do what we're doing collaboratively."

Joint Venture Pediatric Clinic

A first for the School of Nursing is an on-site pediatric clinic run in conjunction with the pediatrics department of the medical school. The clinic is staffed by faculty from both schools, with assistance from their students, as well as faculty and students from the schools of pharmacy and social work.

Serving 400 neighborhood children a week, the clinic is open Monday through Friday, with plans to expand to weekend hours in the future, Perry says.

It offers several benefits to the school and the community: The neighborhood families get a convenient location for pediatric care. Nursing faculty get a place to continue practicing in their field while also teaching. Students get real clinical experience with their professors, affording them a seamless education between work and school.

The new school of nursing building has allowed the school to make progress toward achieving its strategic goals and has provided students and faculty with wonderful opportunities for learning, research, and clinical practice, Perry notes.

By Lisa Wesel

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