Pam Thompson – Dean of the School of Nursing, Ivy Tech Community College – Bloomington

Pam has served as Dean for the School of Nursing at the Ivy Tech Bloomington campus since 2010. Prior to that, she served in the roles of Program chair for the Associate of Science Nursing Program and faculty for the School of Nursing. She has been with the college for 30 years.

 

 

Jennie Vaughan – Chancellor, Ivy Tech Community College – Bloomington

Jennie was appointed Chancellor of Ivy Tech Community College’s Bloomington campus in 2014. An employee of Ivy Tech Bloomington for over 19 years, prior to being named Chancellor – Jennie served in a variety of roles, including Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs and Executive Director of Human Resources. Jennie has more than 30 years of experience in higher education, beginning her career as Registrar and Director of Operations at the University of San Francisco.

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Schmidt Associates is hearing from more Universities looking to grow, expand, or enhance their hands-on learning facilities. We took a minute to talk with Ivy Tech Community College – Bloomington about the expansion of their School of Nursing to provide you insights for your own campus.

How has your new space transformed the nursing program at Ivy Tech Bloomington?

The biggest piece is the growth in our lab space. In our ‘main’ building, where we were located prior to this new space, we had one nursing lab. Within that lab existed our simulation lab space, so we were either doing simulations or skills labs.

In the new building, the Marchant School of Nursing, which is across the street, our lab space more than doubled. We now have two separate spaces, skills on one end of the building and simulation on the other. This allows us to double the number of students we can teach at a time.

Our new space provides us with room to grow our enrollment, which is right now limited by faculty and clinical space available.

 

What feedback do you hear about how the space enhances the program?

Students love simulation. They are always asking for more. We try to drop two simulations into each course, and the space allows us to do this. The simulation puts the students at the bed side with a non-human and we re-create the entire scenario like they are in the hospital without putting any patients at risk.

The fact that the students and faculty can stay in one building and be readily available to each other is great. Faculty seem to be more readily available to students because of the size of the space. The faculty is closer together now sharing office space, and they collaborate more amongst themselves, and with the students. There’s also space that is just for the nursing students which creates program comradery.

The building adds so much to campus and is great for retention and recruitment. We were worried about students being connected to the main academic building across the road, but that hasn’t been an issue. The students all express a sense of pride for having a space of their own. We also have more dedicated classroom space now. It makes scheduling easier and everything runs a little smoother because of the space.

 

If a University is looking to build a new school of nursing, what advice would you share?

Hard wire for as many computer stations as you can. Make sure everything is flexible in its use. You might all of a sudden need 100 students in a classroom. Make sure you design for it.

We love our lounge spaces but have found we could use even more. Our students, as in most nursing schools, are there all day. They come in each morning, bring a lunch with them, and stay all day. The lounges become where they eat, relax, study, and interact with each other. They are used a lot! Something we didn’t design for since this was an existing building was student lockers. Since the students spend so much time in the building, they have requested lockers, which we have added. Make sure to understand your students’ needs so you can accommodate, and always be flexible.

If we can help you plan for or design a hands-on learning space, reach out!