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April 12, 2006 -- The University of Virginia School
of Nursing broke ground Saturday, April 8, for the $12
million Claude Moore Nursing Education Building.
“I’m glad after all these years of construction in
this precinct, that this is going to be our construction,” said
Jeanette Lancaster, Sadie Heath Cabaniss Professor of Nursing
and dean of the School of Nursing. “This is our mud
and we are proud of it.”
Facing a steady drizzle, University officials turned over
the first shovelfuls of dirt under a tent as onlookers
huddled under umbrellas or sat in a tent set up for donors,
dignitaries and members of the Board
of Visitors. Among
the first to dig in the loosened dirt were Lancaster; U.Va.
President John T. Casteen III; Jim Roberts, president of
the Thomas Foundation and former chairman of the nursing
school’s advisory board; Lucien L. Bass III, current
chairman of the advisory board; and Cindi Colyer Allen,
president of the nursing alumni association.
The new building will provide large, flexibly designed
classrooms equipped with cutting-edge instructional technologies;
a Student Life Center; computer kiosks placed strategically
throughout the building (instead of a single computer lab);
conference rooms; and offices for administrators, faculty,
staff and graduate students. The new facility will be completely
adapted to the latest innovations in wireless telecommunications,
and an open staircase will connect all floors, reinforcing
the values of health promotion central to the nursing profession.
“It used to be the infrastructure of a classroom
building was bricks and mortar,” Casteen said. “Now
the backbone of the building is electronic.”
In January, the Claude Moore Charitable Foundation donated
a $5 million challenge grant to the School of Nursing toward
its new four-story, 32,000-square-foot building which will
be across 15th Street from the school’s current home
in McLeod Hall. Moore was a 1916 graduate of the University’s
medical school and his foundation has donated generously
to U.Va.
The Claude Moore Nursing Education Building will help the
School of Nursing to expand its enrollment by up to 25
percent, a significant boost in helping to address the
nation’s critical nursing shortage.
“This is very exciting,” said Allen. “The School
of Nursing is providing the best education available in
the country, and this will help it realize its potential
to educate more nurses who are needed in the commonwealth
and across the country.”
“This is the culmination of a long, hard journey,
which will help shape the future of nursing,” Bass said.
The work does not stop with the Moore building. Once the
nursing school has moved its operations across the street,
renovation will start on McLeod Hall, which was built in
1972. These renovations will allow for significant expansion
for clinical simulation labs, nursing research centers
and for the nursing history center.
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