The future home of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga’s School of Nursing, the Dorothy and Jim Kennedy Health Sciences Building, broke ground on Monday, Nov. 4.
Located at the corner of Palmetto and East 3rd streets, the new facility will allow for a 152% enrollment increase in the School of Nursing, which currently accepts approximately 50% of applicants and turns down eligible students due to space and class size limitations.
“We are here today because of the outstanding nursing program at UTC that will provide a workforce badly needed in our community, in our state and in our region,” said UTC Chancellor Steven R. Angle–who noted that the school’s recent May 2024 Bachelor of Science in Nursing graduates and the first cohort of accelerated BSN graduates achieved a 100% pass rate for the National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX) on the first attempt, fulfilling the requirement for licensure as a registered nurse. “What a testament to the great faculty and staff of our nursing program who are supporting these students and challenging them to be the very best.”
The groundbreaking was attended by faculty, staff, students, alums, building donors and numerous dignitaries–including UT System President Randy Boyd; U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann; Tennessee Sen. Bo Watson, chair of the Hamilton County Legislative Delegation and the Senate Finance, Ways and Means Committee; Rep. Patsy Hazlewood, chair of the House Finance, Ways and Means Committee; and Rep. Yusuf Hakeem.
The project’s anticipated cost of $77 million will be funded through a combination of donations and state resources, with a building campaign goal of $21 million.
Dr. Chris Smith, director of the School of Nursing and UTC’s chief health affairs officer, shared the features of the new building.
It will expand from its current Metro Annex location of 30,000 square feet to 90,000 square feet, Smith said, and house eight classrooms accommodating more than 400 students daily. The facility will include five task training spaces, eight standardized patient actor exam rooms, a specialized space for labor and delivery experiences, and a simulated ICU and emergency room.
A dedicated hall of patient care rooms, similar to those in acute care facilities, will feature a simulated nurse’s station and a medication room. She said the building will increase debriefing spaces from two in the current facility to six.
Currently, all clinical faculty work remotely due to space limitations, but the new building will provide office space for 96 faculty and staff members. Plans for the building also include conference rooms, a wellness room, student and faculty lounges, and an area for food services.
“We have space for the establishment of a center for excellence in interprofessional education, which we envision will focus on bringing students from across the campus together, no matter their major,” she said.
In October 2023, UTC received an $8 million gift from the Kennedy Foundation, Inc. to name the Dorothy and Jim Kennedy Health Sciences Building after the parents of the current Kennedy Foundation trustees–Jim Kennedy III, Elizabeth Kennedy Spratlin and Molly Kennedy (’82).
This will be the first building on campus to be named after an alumna. Dorothy (’82) received a degree in English while attending UTC at the same time as her daughter, Molly.
This is the largest single gift in the School of Nursing’s history.
Over 70% of UTC Bachelor of Science in Nursing graduates remain in the Chattanooga area upon completing their degree. That percentage jumps to 83% for Family Nurse Practitioner graduates.
For over a decade, the United States has experienced a severe nursing shortage that increased because of the pandemic. The Dorothy and Jim Kennedy Health Sciences Building is projected to be completed in the fall of 2026.