The University of St. Thomas will be cracking the “shell” on reserve space on the third and fourth floors of the Schoenecker Center with new nursing simulation facilities.
Director of Construction John Silva said the university plans to fill in this shell space with additional skills labs, a home care unit and supporting office space for the Susan S. Morrison School of Nursing, whose name the new Center for Simulation will share thanks to a donation from the Morrison family in May that prompted the expansion. Construction on the combined 8,000-square feet space — 4,000 on each floor — will begin in early January 2026.
“That space was not predetermined,” Silva said. “ … We set it aside, knowing as a university that there was going to be a need of some kind, and it just so happened that the need was brought forward sooner versus later, and that came in the form of expanding the nursing program in space.”
Silva said that the university began moving forward with plans to fill the space in the past year, once funding needs could be determined and subsequently met.
The plans’ projected January start date was set with the intent to get “noisier work” out of the way during J-term, and Silva said that minimizing student disruption has been part of the discussion as the university moves through the bidding process with contractors.
“You’re not talking jackhammers or saw cutting or anything crazy,” Silva said. “You’re talking, probably the loudest thing will be: we’ve got to frame walls, and that usually means popping nails into the concrete floor.”
Annette Hines, the executive director of the nursing school, said that those walls will be converted into simulation space on one level, which will mimic both a medical office space and a simulated apartment in which students can practice home visits. The other level will house faculty offices.
Hines said that simulation work done in these spaces can count toward up to half of students’ required clinical hours. She said that students currently spend an estimated 30% of their clinical time in the school’s existing simulation spaces and that the new space will give students increased opportunity to fulfill requirements without travelling off-campus.
“The more we can make it feel like a real care environment, like a hospital or somebody’s home, the better it is,” Hines said.
Hines said the addition to the nursing school comes as it plans to double its undergraduate class size from about 50 in the spring of 2026 to a projected 125 in 2029. She said that these cohorts will make the school a “reasonable size,” with no plans to expand class sizes further.
She said that the school is also in the proposal stages of developing a doctoral program, currently aimed to launch in the fall of 2027. These plans will necessitate the hiring of more faculty, which the Schoenecker Center space will help accommodate.
“Any time you offer the terminal degree in a discipline, it really strengthens the whole school,” Hines said. “And even though students may be interested in either our (bachelor’s) or (master’s) program, knowing that we have a doctoral degree here strengthens our whole complement of what we offer.”
The plans to flesh out the Schoenecker Center’s interior will begin less than two years after the building’s opening in February 2024.
Between that building, the Anderson Arena and the combined Microgrid Research Center and greenhouse space attached to Owens Science Hall that is currently under construction, there will have been ongoing construction on the university’s once-underdeveloped South Campus every day since May of 2022, when the Schoenecker Center broke ground.
Kevin Lynch can be reached at lync1832@stthomas.edu.
