With Marquette Business faculty and staff moving from David A. Straz, Jr., Hall into the new Dr. E. J. and Margaret O’Brien Hall this month, the university will begin demolition and construction work on the new home for the College of Nursing at a renovated and expanded Straz Hall in the heart of campus. The Board of Trustees officially approved the project at its December meeting.
This is the second major construction project in the Campus Master Plan set to get underway this month — Marquette will also move forward in the coming weeks with the planned renovation and construction of a fully reimagined, comprehensive Wellness + Recreation facility at the current location of the Helfaer Tennis Stadium and Recreation Center.
Site fencing will go up around Straz Hall the week of Dec. 19. Interior abatement work will occur in January 2023, with demolition of a portion of the building to commence in February. The College of Nursing is expected to move into the renovated building in summer 2024.
As with any vacated campus spaces, plans for Clark Hall — nursing’s current home — will be determined through a future Campus Master Planning process.
With its undergraduate nursing program ranked 29th nationally by U.S. News & World Report, the College of Nursing is poised to prepare as many as 5,000 new Marquette Nurses over the next decade as part of a bold expansion initiative that calls for increased enrollment, greater diversity and continued innovation.
Of the 5,000 new nurses, the college aspires to educate 1,000 Marquette Nurses from diverse backgrounds, grow Ph.D.-prepared faculty and lead in emerging areas, including telehealth education and the mitigation of health care disparities with a more diverse workforce. Recognizing the rapidly changing health care environment, these plans will meet a pressing need to develop future nurse leaders.
U.S. News and World Report ranked Marquette’s undergraduate nursing program 29th in the nation (2023). The College of Nursing’s Master of Science program is ranked 61st (2023); its Doctor of Nursing Practice program is ranked 85th (2023); and the Nurse Midwifery program is 20th (2016). U.S. News ranked Marquette’s online graduate nursing program 38th in 2022, up from 47th in 2021. New for 2022, the college’s online program was also ranked 9th nationally for veterans and 12th in the Nursing Administration/Leadership specialty category.
Watch Marquette Today for updates on the Straz Hall project.
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