Latest Reports

The new six-story, 104,000-sf Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans Center for Health Education provides the first new home for medical education at Duke University since 1930. The facility includes a 400-seat meeting room/conference center, a lecture hall, and two floors of teaching and research laboratories, including a full floor dedicated to clinical simulation. It is centrally located on the medical campus, close to Duke University Hospital, laboratory and research buildings, medical clinics, and the Duke Cancer Center.

Carefully coordinated stakeholder engagement is critical in the design and redevelopment of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) facilities. Effective buildings for the teaching of STEM disciplines are designed by understanding the desired pedagogy, and by enlisting faculty throughout the process to help align the resulting facilities with a school’s culture and mission, according to Christopher Chivetta of Hastings+Chivetta Architects and Stephanie Fabritius, vice president for academic affairs and dean of Centre College in Danville, Ky.

The kind of technology prevalent in today’s health sciences education requires a robust infrastructure that must be figured into a facility’s design during the budgeting and planning stages. Virtual simulation, virtual anatomy, tablet computers, 3-D stereographic display, software tools for collaboration, and touch interaction with LCD monitors—even the tried-and-true classroom technology, such as whiteboards, videoconferencing, telephone conferencing, dual-image large screen projection, large screen LCD monitors, and connectivity for personal devices—all require thoughtful consideration.

The four-story, 102,000-sf Integrated Science Engineering Laboratory Facility (ISELF), the flagship of the St. Cloud State University science facilities, contains mostly science laboratories, with some classrooms, offices, and conference rooms. The primary entry to the facility is through a three-story atrium that provides a clear sense of wayfinding to the programs in the building.

The three-story, 90,0000-sf Health Sciences Education building, which houses the School of Medicine at the University of South Carolina Greenville, establishes a new paradigm in health education. Funded entirely by Greenville Health System, the school is designed to fulfill its mission of collaborative learning and “patient-precise personalized care.”