State-of-the-art sciences centre open for business
June 28, 2011
Darcelle Vigier, lab co-ordinator, and Stan, a mannequin that can blink and breathe, eagerly anticipate students in the lab.
It's the most expensive capital project in the 193-year history of Universite de Saint-Boniface -- even Stan is showing signs of life at the news.
Premier Greg Selinger and MP Shelly Glover will preside over the official opening this morning of Pavillon Marcel-A.-Desautels, the $13-million new health sciences centre blended seamlessly into the venerable school's southeast side along Aulneau Street.
"They used beautiful Tyndall stone -- it was important we keep that cachet. It blends into the community," USB president Raymonde Gagne said Monday.
USB conducted its most ambitious capital campaign with a goal of $15 million -- the final total will be revealed this morning. Philanthropist Desautels will be there, having donated $1 million.
Project manager Rene Dupuis said the new building includes 25,000 square feet over two floors, three labs, a simulation centre, a clinic for students, five classrooms, 27 offices and two conference rooms.
Simulation centre? That's where Stan enters the picture.
Stan is one of three mannequins which (who?) can be programmed to show medical symptoms and conditions, so nursing students can learn hands-on from almost-real people.
"He has the capability of blinking. You can listen to his lungs, take his pulse, put in an IV..." said Prof. Darcelle Vigier, the centre's lab co-ordinator.
Nursing, social work and health care aide students will dominate the new facility.
Students move through an enormous atrium to enter the area.
Pointing to one side of the atrium, Dupuis said, "This is our (former) outside wall. We built on a parking lot."
The entire facility maximizes natural light, and Dupuis has hopes it will achieve the highest-possible environmental rating for heating and lighting.
Many of the health sciences students will be moving from cramped basement space into the gleaming new quarters.
The key to the new classrooms is that they can comfortably handle 60 students, way beyond the existing classrooms that are cramped when 40 students take a class, Dupuis said.
"It's allowed us to breathe and accommodate more classes."
The incoming nursing class will see changes to their degrees. Until now, USB students had to take their fourth and final year through distance education, and the University of Ottawa issued their degrees; new students in September will take all four years in St. Boniface. "For the first time, we'll have our own baccalaureate pro,gram," Dupuis said.
Behind one nondescript locked door, Vigier has a huge storage area full of medical equipment and stack after stack of bits and pieces of artificial body parts.
The USB team studied state-of-the-art schools in Calgary, Ottawa and Saskatchewan before outfitting the Desautels centre to standards as spiffy as they come, she said: "This is what everyone dreams of and wishes for."
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition June 28, 2011 B2