By Kary Patron / Contributing Writer

Missouri Valley College celebrated the opening of the Julie Ann Deems Julien School of Nursing and Health Sciences Building on Aug. 9 with a ribbon-cutting ceremony. The ceremony paid special tribute to Don and Tawnya Julien who provided the lead gift in memory of their wife and mother, Julie.

“It’s a state-of-the-art facility,” MVC President Joe Parisi said. “Students are studying with the same type of equipment that they’re going to see on day one in the hospital.” 

The 17,000-square-foot building hosted its first official class on August 26th and Nursing students and Faculty alike are very excited to use the facility. 

Associate Professor of Nursing and Advisor for the Student Nurses Association, Tonya Eddy, is excited about the students’ new learning opportunities. 

“We love our new building,” Eddy said. “It’s so fantastic.There’s so many cool state-of-the-art things that we can use to offer opportunities for our students for education. We love the huge skills lab. We love the new technology that we have.”

Eddy also hopes having a building on campus will increase student involvement in the Student Nursing Association.

“It’s been difficult in the past to recruit students because meetings were held out at the [remote] campus, which was at the hospital,” Eddy said. “We’re hoping to see a lot more participation from our pre-nursing students. Even though you’re not a member until you’re in the nursing program, all of our pre-nursing students are eligible to participate and to start earning their points towards their graduation chords. At this point, we have one or two, so I’m hoping that there will be a whole lot more involvement.”

Nursing student Hailey Miller expresses how beneficial it is to finally have a building on campus.

“It’s really nice to have something on campus,” Miller said. “When it was far away, it was very isolated. The classrooms used to be very small, but now we have bigger classrooms. And the building itself is very welcoming”