By Tom Flanigan
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wfsu/local-wfsu-983971.mp3
Tallahassee, FL – Two and a half years after groundbreaking, Tallahassee Community College's new Ghazvini Center for Healthcare Education is open for business. Tom Flanigan reports yesterday (Monday) was the first day of classes and both staff and students seem delighted with the new facility.
In one of the Ghazvini Center's bright new classrooms, nursing students are getting acquainted.
"I don't know what kind of nursing student I want to be yet."
Meanwhile, Dean of Healthcare Professions Alice Nied is giving an opening day tour of the eighty-five thousand square foot building. One room looks like a real-life hospital ward. Banks of medical monitors are hooked up to patients that are actually computer controlled manikins.
"These patients can do everything you want them to do. We can deliver babies, we can die, we can have heart rates, blood pressures, lung sounds, pulses in our feet, they can urinate, they can have a stool; you name it, they can do it."
These ultra-sophisticated cyber patients cost about a hundred thousand dollars each. And there are many of them resting comfortably in the Ghazvini Center's various simulation rooms. There are also laboratories, conference rooms, a library and loads of brand new medical equipment. Dean Nied says it makes for a very exciting first day of classes for everyone.
"Even the students that are graduating in December are just walking around kind of wide-eyed looking. Wow!' is the typical reaction when people walk in the building, trying to find their classroom and their labs. They don't get to be the know-it-all senior because it's their first day along with everyone else's."
Nied says it was a massive move from the main T-C-C campus.
"We have the EMT program, we have paramedic, we have respiratory, nursing, RAD tech, fenography; everything came over to this site except dental assisting and dental hygiene."
That's a lot of students, but Dean Nied says there's room for plenty more.
"Right now we have about 427 students. We're hoping to double in size over the next five years."
Monica Lowell is among the current crop of nursing students. She started the program two years ago on the main campus, then put things on hold to have a baby. She loves the new facility.
"It's great! It's so different. I mean it feels so new; I feel just really excited. I don't know it's huge. It's really, really great, I feel really motivated and it feels like a whole new start because we get a whole new building."
Lowell comes from a military family. She's set on a nursing career that helps veterans. So, after graduation, she hopes she can land a job at the new Tallahassee V-A clinic that should be open in a few years.
"That would be even better, cause I don't want to go to Gainesville or Lake City. I'd kind of like to stay here because this is where my family is."
Dean Nied says that's one of the big differences between TCC's nursing program and Florida State University's College of Nursing.
"Community college graduates stay in the community where they go to school. University graduates tend to go back to where they came from or go to another area."
So the 2011 Fall Semester is officially off and running at TCC's new Ghazvini Center for Healthcare Education. You may want to mark your calendar for Thursday, September eighth. That's when the grand opening ceremony and public open house takes place.