Hundreds of people turned out May 29 to celebrate the opening of a brand new Health Sciences and Technology Center at St. Louis Community College’s Wildwood campus.
Some of those involved with the project, including Wildwood Mayor Joe Garritano, STLCC Chancellor Jeff Pittman, Mercy St. Louis President Dr. David Meiners and Wildwood chief academic officer Stephen White, spoke during a ribbon-cutting ceremony held that day.
During his remarks, Garritano said the new facility is a lasting gift for the city and region.
“It’s not just an academic center; it’s a cornerstone in the economic ecosystem we’re building,” he said. “We want students to learn here; we want them to stay here and build their futures here.”
The 132,900-square-foot, state-of-the-art facility was designed by St. Louis-based firm Christner Architects and is the third of six new buildings the college system has opened as part of the college’s $450 million STLCC Transformed Initiative.
The Wildwood campus expansion, along with STLCC’s other recent construction projects, have been partially funded with revenue from Proposition R, a tax increase of 8 cents per $100 assessed valuation that St. Louis city and St. Louis County voters approved in 2021 to pay for improvements for St. Louis Community College, which has four main campuses and a handful of education centers in St. Louis and St. Louis County.
The Missouri General Assembly provided $41 million to help pay for construction and equipment costs for the Wildwood Health Sciences and Technology Center.
Construction manager Kwame Building Group and General Contractor BSI Constructors broke ground on the Health Sciences and Technology Center in May 2023.
With the addition of that center, the Wildwood campus will offer 10 new degrees and certificate programs, such as remote aircraft piloting, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and paramedic technology.
The center will also house STEM classes and labs, a new enrollment center, student services and STLCC’s new remote aircraft pilot certificate program. An outdoor classroom with a large netted enclosure for safe drone piloting practice was built alongside the new facility.
As part of the new programs offered at the campus, students will be able to access simulations that mimic driving an ambulance, along with a functional MRI machine.
Dr. J. Austin Turner, program coordinator for the MRI certificate program, said the machine is one of the few of its kind in a higher education setting in the state.
“You can’t really put your hands on one outside of a hospital setting, and this simulator allows us to do that,” he said. “Not only do we have a fully immersive learning environment for the students, (but) it is the same education at a fraction of the cost.”
St. Louis Community College on May 29 holds a ribbon cutting for the addition to its Wildwood campus.
School officials also said the new center will double the learning space on campus and increase student capacity for the nursing program to 840 students.
Pittman said the new center and other expansion projects are having a profound effect on district enrollment.
“We were up over 1,000 students last fall and last spring,” he said. “Currently, for summer we’re running about 1,000 students up, and for fall we’re 1,000 students up already.”
White said he believes the variety of programs offered will allow students to discover pathways they didn’t know existed.
“Sometimes you go and say, ‘I’m going to be a nurse, and maybe they learn along the way that they want to be a scientist or get their four-year journalism degree,’” he said. “We have all of those things.”
In partnership with Mercy St. Louis, STLCC nursing students may enroll in a program called “Win From Within.” In exchange for at least one shift a week at Mercy, the hospital will cover the costs for the students’ tuition, textbooks, lab fees and clinical scrubs.
“What comes out of this center is extremely important to us and extremely important to you as a community,” Meiners said.
White also said the response from faculty has been positive so far.
“(There’s) excitement from the faculty about being in a new space, (and) there’s some nervousness about the practical things because we have a new computer system. Change is hard,” he said. “Right now is the time they’re starting to look forward to actually envisioning their classrooms taking place in these spaces.”
Creating a college town
The STLCC-Wildwood campus has a competitive edge over other colleges in the area that don’t have the same degree programs, Pittman said, adding that there’s more behind the effort to offer students more resources than just competition.
“For me, it’s real simple; it’s what the employers want,” he said. “We have intel in terms of where all the job vacancies are, and health care is such a low-hanging fruit; there are 221,000 jobs in health care in St. Louis County alone.”
White said there are plans to involve the community at large on campus.
“We’re planning to have the (Coffee With the Mayor event) in this building,” he said. “The mayor and I talked, and we kind of hope (Wildwood) becomes a college town.”