The Forum

The Nursing and Health Sciences Center and the Advanced Manufacturing Center will begin hosting classes and faculty offices in January 2025 for the upcoming spring semester. The Forum staff, along with Florissant Valley Campus President Dr. Elizabeth Perkins, were invited to tour the buildings last month.

We first visited the Nursing and Health Sciences Center. Our first stop was a large, open dental clinic illuminated by a line of windows. It housed a grid of densely packed work stations, almost like cubicles of an office. It was messy and incomplete, of course, but the room would soon be a fully operational, state-of-the-art clinic nestled inside our campus. Dr. Perkins said that once the clinic was completed, it would offer affordable student-run dental services to the public, similarly to the dental clinic located at Forest Park’s Center for Nursing and Health Sciences.

Upstairs, we were taken into a hallway modeled after a hospital corridor, where we once again stopped for an explanation from Dr. Perkins. Unlike most other sections of the building we had seen so far, the hallway had ceiling tiles and completed overhead lighting; by far, this area seemed to be the closest to its finished state. Dr. Perkins told us that the several small rooms on each side of the corridor were going to contain animatronic patients for nursing students to practice on as part of their training. They were already outfitted with cabinets, counters, and sinks.

Up another flight of stairs were the radiology labs. The room was defined by a large diagonal wall with a window cut into it, which would shield the control room from radiological equipment. 

In the soon-to-be student lounge–a large, open commons area flanked on two sides by window walls that face the rest of campus–we were given a short break from the tour. During this time, Dr. Perkins was interviewed by KSDK, who had been periodically filming parts of the tour with a large professional video camera atop a tripod.

Eventually, we were guided to the Advanced Manufacturing Center. Among the people waiting for us there was John Mueller, the managing partner of JEMA–the architectural firm behind the building. We walked through a dark, undecorated, garage-like space, full of materials and equipment. We arrived in the central hallway of the building in what felt like a grand reveal. The hallway was wide–as wide as a road–and featured gigantic openings on each side. Everything was illuminated by a large skylight dozens of feet overhead. The Advanced Manufacturing Center was more open in design; it seemed like one continuous space as opposed to the compartmentalized design of the Nursing and Health Sciences Center.

Mueller's inspiring explanation showed that he truly cared about this building and had put deep thought into elements of its design. He said he wanted the building to emulate two idealized places: a town square and a main street. As he explained, this hallway was meant to be an indoor main street, a space for students to traverse, work, and ogle the work of their peers. The skylight above, shining down an open space scaling multiple floors, was meant to bring light into the commons buried deep in the building, far from the outside.

At the end of the hallway was a grand staircase leading to a large open space, almost identical in design to the Nursing and Health Sciences Center’s student lounge. The staircase featured amphitheater-like stair seating facing the indoor main street. Mueller explained that this area was outfitted with a projector and a screen that would descend opposite the staircase, allowing the building to publicly show movies for students in this high-traffic area, much like a town square.

Mueller spoke to the group in the open space above the stairs, a commons area between classrooms, labs, and offices, with an exit to the outside. From here, the tour ascended another flight of stairs to the last proper stop of the tour: the Advanced Manufacturing Center’s outdoor terraces. While incomplete, and too nerve-wracking in their current shape for more than Mueller and one journalist to go outside, these terraces would soon be outdoor lounges for students, featuring greenery and an incredible view of the campus and its surrounding nature.