NEWS

School of Nursing to break ground on 69,350-square-foot addition

CHAPEL HILL -- The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Nursing will break ground on its new addition – which will nearly double the school’s existing research and learning space – Thursday (April 25) at 10:30 a.m.

The 69,350-square-foot addition will include a technologically enhanced classroom, a human patient simulator laboratory for critical care skill development and a landscaped roof to control stormwater runoff.

UNC Chancellor James Moeser and Dr. Linda R. Cronenwett, dean of the School of Nursing, will host the ground-breaking ceremony. Featured speakers will include Moeser; Cronenwett; Dr. Susan Foley Pierce, president-elect of the North Carolina Nurses Association and associate professor at the School of Nursing; and Margaret Ferguson Raynor, chairwoman of the School of Nursing Foundation Board Inc.

"In this new building, future generations of nurses will be educated, new knowledge about health care and nursing practice will be generated and new partnerships with hospitals and communities in the care of patients will be assured," said Cronenwett. "North Carolina can take pride in the national and international eminence of its nursing programs, today and for the future."
Half of the projected $20 million budget for the addition to Carrington Hall will come from the higher education bond referendum of 2000. Those funds are being leveraged with $4 million from private fund raising, $3.5 million from campus overhead receipt funds generated by faculty research and $3 million from School of Nursing funding and loans.

Construction is expected to begin this fall, with completion scheduled for spring 2005. The addition will be the first building on campus to begin construction with a pending Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. Certification is voluntary and based on design and construction practices promoting buildings that are environmentally responsible and healthy places to work.

The landscaped roof is in accordance with the campus’s master plan, whose environmental strategy establishes campuswide recommendations for keeping UNC’s natural systems healthy and reducing the university’s environmental impact on the larger community.

Following the ceremony, at 1:30 p.m., will be the school’s 2002 Elizabeth L. Kemble Lecture, to be held in the lobby-level auditorium of the Tate-Turner-Kuralt Building. The lecture is free to the public.

The featured speaker will be Dr. Afaf I. Meleis, the Margaret Bond Simon dean of nursing at the University of Pennsylvania. Meleis is an internationally respected scholar on immigrant, international and women’s health. Her address will focus on international collaboration in health care. The School of Nursing created the Elizabeth L. Kemble Lecture in honor of the school’s first dean, who was instrumental in establishing the first collegiate school of nursing in the state.

For more information, contact Sunny Smith Nelson at (919) 966-1412.

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School of Nursing contact: Sunny Smith Nelson at (919) 966-1412