Health Sciences, Parks Memorial renovated
The Parks-Memorial building, also known as Parks-nursing, and the Health Sciences building have each undergone major renovations in recent months and have been reopened for use by students and faculty.
These buildings have been at GCSU since the 1990s. The Parks-Memorial Building now houses almost all of the Nursing faculty, save one cohort, and has updated its offices in a way that allows the students and faculty to feel at home in their new building.
Martha Colvin, the associate dean of the College of Health Sciences and also a professor of nursing, is happy with the changes.
“The new office building is wonderful and the lab areas located in the other building are something to be proud of,” Colvin said.
The Health Science Building has had a complete interior overhaul as well. The building no longer houses an indoor pool, but instead has added many necessary lab areas and classrooms that make the facility function more efficiently.
These newly-renovated classrooms feature tiered style seating, SMART board technology, and as an added bonus for the students, padded seats for those long lecture classes.
Junior wellness major Taylor Hayes is also a fan of the improvements.
“I really like the new building. All the new equipment and labs really help out the teacher teach us the material that we need to know,” Hayes said. “The new movement lab is really amazing, you have a lot of space to do what you got to do. This new building is a perfect facility for educating all of the different majors.”
Other labs that have been added onto the building along with the Movement lab include the Exercise Science Lab, the Athletic Training Lab, and the Nursing Skills Lab. All of these new lab areas are outfitted with new high-tech equipment, but none more so then the Nursing Skills Lab.
The lab gives the impression of walking into an actual hospital. The first thing that greets a visitor is a service desk where students can learn everything that they need to know about helping patients in a real hospital. Behind the desk are rows upon rows of hospital beds fitted with the equipment needed to teach the students how to handle any and all situations.
Another not-so-new addition to the lab is something known as a “simulated man”. This item has been locked up in storage for a while because there was no place to put him in the Centennial Center, but now he has his own room fit with everything needed to give the students a simulation of working on an actual human being.
Nursing majors are not the only ones who are able to experience the wonders of the new Health Sciences Building. Professors of music therapy and all their offices are now located on the first floor of the Health Sciences Building. Along with the entire faculty finally being all together in one building, the music therapy majors can now take full advantage of the labs and new equipment available in their classrooms.
Chelsey Mercado, the chair of the music therapy department, enjoys the technological advances in the building.
“We finally have the necessary rooms to house all the equipment that we have. We now have separate rooms for the Somatron, the recording studio, along with multiple observations rooms for studying patients,” Mercado said. “The observation rooms are filled with equipment that can help the students and teachers observe the patients and simultaneously upload the video acquired to a webpage for both the students and teachers to access anytime.”
The new rooms and equipment for the music therapy department mean a better educational experience for the students and a better overall work experience for the staff.
There will be an open house on Oct. 16 from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. for the newly renovated buildings. Attendees will range from members of the Board of Regents to faculty, staff, and GCSU alumni.
Posted by Colonnade Archives
on Sep 4 2009. Filed under Sports.
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