Shenandoah University’s Health & Life Sciences Building was recently featured on the cover of American School & University magazine’s 25th Anniversary edition. The August 2015 issue, which also served as the magazine’s Educational Interiors Showcase issue, featured the Health & Life Sciences Building in the “Outstanding Designs: Laboratories” category.
“Designed for flexibility, the nursing labs permit instructors to transition easily between group instruction and one-on-one training and observation,” noted the magazine. “A simulation suite that uses interactive patient mannequins enables instructors to assess students’ technical capacity through more realistic scenarios. A 16-station cadaver lab replaces an older off-campus lab with larger, more functional space.”
“The Educational Interiors Showcase would not be the invaluable resource it has been for the past quarter-century without the schools, universities and architects that have shared their exceptional projects and unique perspectives on educational interior design and planning,” said American School & University Editor-in-Chief Joe Agron in his editor’s message introducing the August issue.
“Hopefully, the projects included in this year’s edition will spark new ideas and approaches to how the next generation of school and university interiors will be designed, furnished and function,” he added.
The university’s Health & Life Sciences Building, which opened in the fall of 2014, anchors the south corner of main campus and provides a state-of-the-art facility for health care education.
Replete with standard and active-learning classrooms, meeting and study spaces, and laboratories and lounges, the 71,000-square-foot building serves the university’s athletic training, biology, chemistry, nursing, respiratory care and pre-health programs.
The Health & Life Sciences Building also houses a 2,000 square-foot, 16-table cadaver lab; a nursing skills lab and simulation suite; and more than 50 offices for faculty and staff.
The three-story building is topped with a tower modeled after the tower on Howe Hall in Dayton, Virginia, harkening back to Shenandoah’s historic roots in that area. The tower boasts an impressive stained glass window that shines with the university crest, depicting the mountains and rivers of the institution’s home in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley.
Earl Swensson Associates (ESa) of Nashville, Tennessee, designed the building and Howard Shockey & Sons of Winchester, Virginia, served as the project’s general contractor.