Collegio Online

Issue date: 4/3/08 Section: Front Page

Media Credit: illustration courtesy Facilities Planning

The Student Health Center and University Counseling Services will soon have a new building with which to care for PSU students.

Paul Stewart, director of facilities planning, says the new, 11,399-square-foot building will give both the counseling center and the health center much better means to help students.

If all goes according to plan, Stewart says, construction workers will break ground at the beginning of the fall 2008 semester, and the center will be open for fall 2009.

"I have seen their existing facility, I have toured existing facilities on other campuses, and it's very easy in those contexts to see how far behind we are," Stewart said, noting that while the staffs for both centers are excellent, they are in need of better buildings and equipment.
The current health center is a 1,836-square-foot building located next to Carnie Smith Stadium, while PSU's counseling services are housed in Whitesitt Hall.

The building, to be built on the corner of Lindbergh and Broadway where orange and brown lots now sit, will provide a place where students will "go to one building no matter what their health needs are," Stewart said.

Rita Girth, director of student health services, says the building will help students get fast treatment from their four primary caregivers, who have often been hindered by the limited number of exam rooms available in the current building.
The Student Health Center will occupy the larger part of the new building.

"The increase is still huge for the student health center," Stewart said.

The amount of exam rooms will more than double, while a recovery room, a procedure room, a lab, a pharmacy and a triage area will now be at the health center staff's disposal.

The current building does not have dedicated rooms for any of these uses.
"We only have five exam rooms here to work out of," Girth said. "Just those additional exam rooms will allow us to see patients more quickly and have a more efficient patient flow. What that will provide the students is shorter waiting room times to get them in and out and back into their busy, hectic lives that they have."

Administrators say the new building will incur a $12 raise in student fees to help pay for the $3.2 million project, but Girth says the cost will be worth it for the nearly 80 students who visit the health center each day.

"So many of the students are uninsured," Girth said. "Since the Student Health Center serves as a primary healthcare provider to many of the students, that small fee increase would service a lot of students."

Still, Girth says, she hopes that the $12 student fee can be lowered through increased private donations.

Stewart says the project is moving forward quickly now after a three-year wait.
"I have given the architects notice to proceed from design/development... to take it to completion, which would be up through construction documents, and then put it out for bid," Stewart said.

Meanwhile, construction on Stewart's other major project, the new recreation center, was slowed by a rough winter. Stewart says he plans to start moving faculty into the building at the end of the spring 2008 semester.

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