Students and staff members gathered in parking lot T Oct. 23 to watch and participate in the groundbreaking ceremony for the new nursing building, a greatly needed and anticipated project at UNCW.

“The process of getting to this groundbreaking has been a challenging experience,” Chancellor Rosemary DePaolo said. “But the journey being made is critical to the future of health care in the region and state.”

Site preparation is expected to begin in December 2008 with visible signs of construction by January 2009. The building is proposed to open fall of 2010.

The $30.1 million project will include a 75,000-square-foot structure, housing the School of Nursing. It will offer more state-of-the-art patient simulation labs, classrooms, faculty offices and research areas, and seminar rooms than the Friday Annex could hold, increasing the capacity of students that will be admitted into the program.

“Every hospital, clinic and health care facility across North Carolina needs more nurses,” DePaolo said. “To prepare them, every nursing program in our state needs more nurse educators. This 75,000-square-foot building is a big part of UNCW’s commitment to answer our state’s call to action.”

Other speakers at the ceremony included Provost Brian Chapman, UNCW Board of Trustees chair Terry Coffey, School of Nursing interim dean Susan Pierce, and Student Nurses’ Association president Sara Price.

“The university’s responsibility to the citizens of North Carolina is to prepare the best possible nurses, facilitate the best possible nursing research and apply the latest nursing knowledge to improve the health of the populations it serves,” Pierce said.

She added, “This new facility, with its state-of-the-art classrooms, simulation labs and research capabilities, will assure the learning environment to promote 21st century professional education and practice.”

Not only will the building house larger classrooms for nursing students, but also meeting spaces for the school’s outreach activities. These include Camp Bones, which facilitates preparation for middle and high school aged students interested in health careers, and Camp Special Time, a program that provides aid to military families who have children with special needs.

The ceremony ended with nursing students collecting teal sand as a souvenir to commemorate the groundbreaking of their new building.