UW Health Sciences Education Building breaks ground

UW Health Sciences leadership and Washington state legislators celebrated construction of the Health Sciences Education Building on the UW’s Seattle campus with a small, physically distanced groundbreaking ceremony on Thursday, Aug. 27. The building is expected to be completed in May 2022.

The Health Sciences Education Building will be where students learn integrated patient care in an integrated training facility. The 100,000 square-foot, four-story, $100 million, fully modern facility received $70 million from the Washington state Legislature. The University is seeking an additional $30 million in private support from community members through naming opportunities and donations to complete funding for the building.

The new building is designed around flexible spaces that allow for 21st-century teaching techniques, including high-tech learning facilities used for computer simulation, mock treatment labs and an ultra-modern Anatomy Lab Suite with virtual anatomy capabilities. The facility will also enable robust remote learning access for students and professional who are part of the UW’s multi-state medical education program — WWAMI, which stands for the states served by the School of Medicine: Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho.

In addition, the health sciences deans envision a building with the capacity for students to immediately share ideas, images and projects in classrooms and in their working teams. The finished building will also have a library extension that is integrated into the main classroom floor to help students immediately engage evidence in their learning, gain skills in navigating resources and to benefit from coaching about how to use library tools, resources and in their project work.

This video was produced by Kiyomi Taguchi for UW News.