‘A representation of an open door to our community’: UNM celebrates opening of new College of Nursing and Public Health Excellence building

Rosario Medina walks through a nearly 94,000-square-foot space near the University of New Mexico Hospital, where nursing students will soon begin taking classes and studying before eventually making their way out into the community as frontline workers.

The space is the new home for the Colleges of Nursing and Population Health at UNM, encompassing three stories and a mix of classrooms, offices for faculty and staff, research space and community hubs for students. It comes two years after UNM officials broke ground on the $43.3 million project — a mix of general obligation bond and university funding — who at the time said it would help increase the number of students in the university’s nursing programs.

Medina, who began as dean of the College of Nursing in June, said UNM has already increased enrollment since then. Some 996 students were enrolled in the college’s programs this fall — more than doubling the number from two years ago.

“I think the biggest thing for us … (is) that this needs to be a place that is just not another educational building, but really a representation of an open door to our community, that you too can be represented here, you too can be educated here and you too can become a healer to then go back into your community,” Medina told the Journal.

A building for everyone

Amanda Ortiz, the college's academic operations officer, said that by building the College of Nursing and Public Health Excellence building, the College of Population Health has, in many ways, been able to centralize its presence across UNM.

The facility, Ortiz said, has effectively cut down the number of buildings the College of Population Health is in from eight buildings across UNM’s campus to just three. And it has created offices for faculty and staff close to student study spaces.

“The intent of this building is for collaboration,” Ortiz said.

It’s much the same for UNM’s College of Nursing, which in the past, like the College of Population Health, was spread across seven buildings, including mainly in a shared space with the College of Pharmacy. Medina said the new space, while a place for students to come and learn, speaks to a “purposeful” design meant to increase a sense of working together.

For instance, on the first floor of the south end of the building, a classroom can either be one or two spaces with a dividing wall. The same is true for a classroom on the second floor, which can be opened up or divided depending on the type of class being taught. It can accommodate anywhere from 25 to 96 students, Medina said.

The classrooms are also not the typical auditorium or front-facing style of classrooms — the kind where every student is looking in the same direction as the teacher. Monitors that are mounted on the ceilings line the classrooms and desks and are aligned in a way that allows students to better collaborate on projects.

That’s important, Medina said, because in nursing classes, “if you give them an assignment, which we do a lot in nursing … they have to break down and think through things.”

The first floor of the building, designed by Albuquerque-based Dekker and constructed by Enterprise Builders, also has a student success area, where students can meet with advisers and get information on financial aid.

On the second floor, a wet lab on the north end allows a space for researchers to “study all the yucky stuff that other people don’t want to touch,” Medina said.

“When you say scientists and you think of scientists, — they’re called bench scientists — they’re looking at the molecular level of things. And we have a few scientists that are doing that,” Medina said. “The goal is to increase the capacity now for bench scientists.”

The second floor also includes a clinical research space, which can allow the college’s faculty and researchers to perform clinical studies.

"What is the research question? How are we going to put this together? How do we see this coming into play?” Medina said.

Addressing a shortage

The new building also allows UNM’s College of Nursing to better address a lingering problem in the state and across the country: a shortage of nurses.

Troy Clark, president and CEO of the New Mexico Hospital Association, told a legislative committee last month that there were 8,800 nursing positions currently open, up from about 6,000 last year, according to an article from New Mexico Political Report.

Medina said while UNM’s College of Nursing has largely increased over the last couple of years, it needs to up the number of students even more to address the shortage in New Mexico.

She said UNM has met with other health systems, like Lovelace and Presbyterian, to discuss the lingering issue, adding that those companies “want our nurses.”

That makes sense considering UNM’s College of Nursing is the largest in the state and its bachelor's of nursing program is regarded as one of the best in the country — U.S. News & World Report ranked it 54th in the U.S. among nearly 700 nursing schools, placing the program in the top 8%.

But, she said, “We also want to think about other models of nursing that can exist in the community, like primary care, which is something that nursing has always been in the community.”

UNM is in a unique position where nearly 70% of its students identify as a member of an underrepresented group, meaning if UNM can graduate those students, they can better serve their communities. About 92% of graduates, according to UNM, stay in New Mexico.

“After World War II, everybody shifted into the hospital, and we really need to start thinking about going back into our communities and meeting the needs of our communities,” Medina said. “They’re not going to come into the hospital setting — only when they’re literally dying — and that’s what we see here.”

Asked why nurses are important, Medina kept it simple.

“A long time ago, patients used to be taken care of by nurses, so they had hubs where you would find the physicians and all the other disciplines, but it was the nurses that got on horses to go visit patients at home on a regular basis, into the countryside or into the slums,” she said. “That is the art of what we are. That’s how we’ve been designed, and honestly, we have always answered the call to the underserved. That’s been our call.”