As the COVID-19 pandemic enters its second year, Indiana University continues to invest in medical education and research to help improve the lives of Hoosiers. One of the most visible symbols of this commitment sits on the former site of IU's driving range, the new Regional Academic Health Center.
IU President Michael A. McRobbie and IU Health President Emeritus Daniel Evans recently toured the site, which includes the new IU Health Bloomington Hospital and IU Bloomington's Health Sciences Building. The academic building is designed to bring together most of the health science programs on the IU Bloomington campus into one place.
Combined and integrated, these two facilities will make up an academic health center of over 700,000 square feet, one that will serve the health needs of the surrounding region by educating students to become new healthcare professionals in the state, applying and testing health sciences research in a clinical setting, and serving as a major employer. Indiana University and IU Health are, when taken together, Indiana’s largest employer.
From top: McRobbie speaks to students as he drops into a class in the new Nursing Learning Resource Center during a tour of the recently-completed IU Health Sciences Building at the IU Regional Academic Health Center on the IU Bloomington campus on Tuesday, March 9, 2021; McRobbie looks out the window from the IU School of Social Work space within the recently-completed IU Health Sciences Building; IU School of Nursing Associate Dean and Associate Professor Mary Lynn Davis-Ajami gives McRobbie a tour of the new Nursing Learning Resource Center. Photos by James Brosher, Indiana University
The Health Sciences Building houses the IU Hearing Clinic, IU Speech-Language Clinic, School of Medicine, School of Social Work and will soon include the School of Nursing. Students started attending classes in the state-of-the-art facility last month. The building provides new space and modern facilities that will allow IU to considerably increase the number of students in these programs, thus helping to address an acute shortage of healthcare workers in the state.
Having the academic building next to the new hospital, which expects to start treating patients on site later this year, allows students studying different disciplines to train alongside each other in the same way they will work together when they graduate. They'll also have the opportunity to learn with IU Health professionals in a new Simulation Center. The center will be fully functional by the fall semester and includes patient and doctor rooms and a home environment for training exercises.
The center’s proximity to IU’s technology park will also allow IU to leverage one of the most advanced information technology environments in the world to support health sciences faculty research, and to offer state-of the-art training technologies to students.
Work on the Regional Academic Health Campus continues as IU is expanding and improving its health sciences facilities in other parts of the state. IUPUI's Health Sciences Building is undergoing major renovations and repairs, and IU dedicated the Stone Family Center for Health Sciences in Evansville in 2018.
View the 2018 Regional Academic Health Center Groundbreaking
Read President McRobbie's remarks from the groundbreaking
Read a 2018 op-ed about the Regional Academic Health Center
