Murray State’s Board of Regents, along with other university personnel, regional government officials and healthcare stakeholders, broke ground Friday on the university’s new nursing and health professions building.
The groundbreaking took place during the Board of Regents’ quarterly meeting.
The building will be the new home for MSU’s nursing program. It will also house health services for the far western Kentucky school’s students, faculty and staff. The space will include two 60-person classrooms, a 50-person classroom, a simulation center, a physical assessment lab, an exercise physiology lab, an essential skills lab, collaborative study spaces and other student and faculty amenities.
Dina Byers, Murray State’s dean of the nursing and health professions school, said the $45.5 million space should help attract more students to the university and – in turn – help train more people to fill shortages in the state’s healthcare workforce.
“I think it’s a positive move for western Kentucky. We have so many opportunities with this new space, and I think taking advantage of that is what we need to do,” Byers said. “We do have a responsibility to our workforce partners to help meet their needs.”
Murray State President Bob Jackson echoed Byers’ sentiment, identifying the building as an important investment for the campus to train the next generation of healthcare professionals, especially in the face of worker shortages in the field.
“We continue to grow and enhance our programs in this area as we meet the healthcare needs of this region, and our Commonwealth,” Jackson said. “It’s an important responsibility.”
According to reports from the Kentucky Hospital Association, hospitals in the Commonwealth had nearly 13,000 unfilled job vacancies at the end of 2022 – almost 5,000 of those for registered nurses. The Kentucky Nurses Association estimates that the state will be short at least 20,000 nurses by 2025.
The new nursing building funds come from appropriations from the state government.
Other Regent Business
Murray State’s Board of Regents also authorized Jackson to negotiate the purchase of Station 74 – a 268-bed apartment complex not far from campus – for up to $16.5 million. Regent Tom Waldrop, who said he owns property near Station 74, abstained from voting.
Jackson said the acquisition would help the university address a growing housing need, as the institution is already leasing 32 rooms at the apartment complex due to capacity issues with on-campus housing.
The university president said adding Station 74 to its lineup of on-campus housing options could potentially replace the aging College Courts, a group of on-campus apartment buildings built over 60 years ago geared toward non-traditional and upper division students as well as students who are married, single parents or in graduate school.
This move, Jackson said, would help the university – which just welcomed its largest freshman class this fall – address projected growing on-campus housing demands and avoid costs and risks associated with constructing more new housing.
The board also heard updates regarding discussions about potentially establishing a veterinary school, which would be Kentucky’s first.
Murray State’s agriculture school dean Brian Parr said he has had discussions with government officials at the local, state and federal levels to see what support for this initiative exists. He said one of his focuses has been on “removing any logical opposition” to the vet school idea.
“Our feasibility study showed this in a tremendous way, that there is a need, that we have the capability, that the [distributive] model we’re proposing is a viable model being used across the country,” Parr said.
Under a distributive vet school model, students receive some or all of their clinical education at off-campus sites rather than a traditional, on-site veterinary teaching hospital.
Several regents voiced support for the veterinary school proposal. Vice chair Virginia Gray said having the school at Murray State would be beneficial for the agriculture industry in western Kentucky.
Waldrop said he wants an option for veterinary students in Kentucky to stay in-state for their higher education, and also wants to attract more people to treat farm animals.
“If we put an urban veterinary school in place in Kentucky, there will be a lot of urban veterinarians, and we don’t need veterinarians opening up fast-paced medical veterinary clinics. We need [vets for] cattles and horses and chickens,” he said.
The Louisville Courier-Journal reports that there were only 1,160 veterinarians employed and working in Kentucky in May 2022. As of November 2022, less than 60 of those vets offered full-time service to large animals like cattle, sheep, goats and pigs.
The entire Murray State board of regents meeting can be streamed online.
This story is republished with permission from WKMS. Read the original.
Hannah Saad is the assistant news director for WKMS. Originally from Michigan, Hannah earned her bachelor’s degree in news media from The University of Alabama. Prior to joining WKMS in March 2023, Hannah was a news reporter at The Paducah Sun.
