The sight of construction equipment and crews have become quite common on Southwestern Michigan College’s two campuses over the last 20 years.

On top building three new residential halls on the college’s Dowagiac campus, the community college has overhauled nearly all of its existing buildings over the past few decades. In the past two years alone, the college wrapped up extensive, multimillion dollar renovations to two of its three original structures, the P.D. O’Leary
Building in 2015 and the Daugherty Building in 2016.

Later this year, SMC will break ground on its most ambitious renovation yet — and they are looking for some support from the community to do so.

SMC President David Mathews announced Wednesday afternoon that the college was formally launching a major fundraising initiative, designed to raise $2.6 million to help offset the costs of the college’s planned $9.6 million expansion of its nursing facility. The college foundation and other administrators plan on reaching out to area philanthropists and institutions — including local healthcare providers — for donations, Mathews said.

The expansion — set to break ground in May — has been in the hopper for around five years, the college president said. In addition to the public funds, the college will pay around $3 million with funds administrators have set aside over the last few years, while state grants will pay for the remaining $4 million.

The project will update and expand on the existing nursing facility on the Dowagiac campus, which was first opened in 1970. The current building footprint will be more than doubled, with the addition of eight new classrooms, which will include 20 beds for nursing instruction, dedicated rooms for specialized demonstrations and four state-of-the-art simulation labs, where students can work with robots capable of simulating childbirth and other common procedures.

“To have four of these labs will give us twice as many labs as most community colleges in the state of Michigan,” Mathews said.

The renovated facility will also incorporate design cues and elements from the O’Leary and Daugherty projects, such as adding more natural lighting and building new lounge areas.

“We build in places for students to meet, work and interact with each other and faculty in a very natural, comfortable, Barnes and Noble like atmosphere,” Mathews said.

The expanded floor space and new classrooms should allow the college to expand the amount of students it can admit into the nursing program. Right now, the college’s accreditation agency only permits 40 new students to enter the program each semester, a figure Mathews is hoping to bump up to 60 when the expansion is complete, he said.

In addition, the updated technology should allow SMC’s renowned nursing program to not just remain competitive with other community colleges, but four-year universities as well, Mathews said.

“We want to make it a facility that matches the quality of the programs that are currently offered within it,” he said.

Construction on the facility is expected to last more than a year, with classes expected to begin there in August 2018. During construction, nursing instruction will take place in the west wing of the Mathews Library and Conference Center.