Written by: Cayla Bush / Editor-in-Chief
The Biscayne Bay Campus hopes for an influx of about 700 new students in fall 2017 with the move of the Health Services Administration department to the campus.
“It’s going to create a new day for BBC,” Ora Strickland, dean of the College of Nursing and Health Sciences, said to Student Media. “That’s going to be the major with the largest number of students on that campus.”
Eric Arneson, vice president of Student Affairs, says that the addition of such a large number of students will help with the addition of courses.
“BBC has unfortunately had some attrition in academic programs and course offerings,” Arneson said to Student Media. “By having Health Services Administration [at BBC], not only is it going to bring 700-800 students, it’s also going to allow us to have enough students on campus to create core classes. Right now we don’t have enough students to justify putting those basic classes at BBC but now it’ll give us the opportunity to do that.”
Though the increase in students won’t cause a significant change in SGC-BBC funding, Arneson says it’s going to create an increase in energy and community on campus.
In order to welcome the program to the campus, a welcome program will be hosted Tuesday, Feb. 28 from 12:30 to 1:15 p.m. The event will provide students a chance to take photos with Roary, receive tours of the campus and hear from student government, Vice Provost Steven Moll, and Strickland.
“It’s really an introduction for students to get an understanding of what’s coming. It’s going to be a fun, festive event,” Arneson said.
Health Services Administration is currently housed in Academic Health Center 3 along with the other programs in the College of Nursing and Health Sciences. Strickland says the program’s move is due to a need for more space.
“We’ve outgrown this building,” Strickland said. “We could’ve tried to keep Health Services [at MMC] but we wouldn’t have enough space for faculty offices. We have to compete more and more for classroom space.”
Prior to 2004, the Nicole Wertheim College of Nursing and Health Sciences, which houses the Health Services Administration department, was located on BBC. In 2004, the college moved to MMC in anticipation of the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine being built. Strickland says that the move was to ensure that the students seeking clinical degrees would be located on the same campus.
Now, the department will be located in Academic Center 1 rooms 361 to 366.
Strickland says that BBC would provide the space to accommodate the needs of students in the department in the long run. She estimates that in a few years it will be over a thousand students in the departments undergraduate and graduate programs at BBC.
“For at least the first year we’ve negotiated with upper administration that students can move back and forth free of charge on the buses. The students shouldn’t have to come out of their pockets to go between MMC and BBC,” Strickland said.
She stressed that the goal is to have a smooth transition with the move that is convenient for students and that the quality of the program is going to be maintained.
“We want the facilities to be equitable to what’s here, and we want our students to be happy with the services they’re getting at BBC and the quality of their education.”
Photo courtesy of Creative Commons
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