A $19 million facility that will serve SDSU students in the health care field in Sioux Falls will be ready this summer after an extensive renovation project. The SDSU Metro Center will be a place for nursing, pharmacy, respiratory care, medical lab science and public health majors to learn.

 President Barry Dunn said the university started the search for a new building at least five years ago, when the previous facility was turned over to the University of South Dakota – Sioux Falls. 

“I literally drove around Sioux Falls,” Dunn said. “I literally stopped into some places to see if they would be interested in selling.”

The building, located at 33rd Street and Minnesota Ave, was gifted to SDSU by Avera Medical Group. Vernon Brown, SDSU associate vice president for external affairs, said there are no state tax dollars going into the Metro Center site. It’s being funded by lead gifts from Avera and other donors that the SDSU Alumni & Foundation has identified. 

Dr. Ron Place, regional president and CEO of Avera McKennan Hospital & University Health Center, said Avera’s continued growth prompted his organization to donate a space to the university because “we can’t expand services without the workforce to support them.”

“Nursing, pharmacy and medical laboratory sciences are among the most critical needs in health care today,” he added in an email to Collegian staff. “By partnering closely with our university partners, we’re able to align education with the evolving realities of health care and better prepare graduates for successful, meaningful careers.” 

The 44,000-square foot building was constructed in the 1980s as a grocery store, and after renovations, only three original walls stand.

“The whole front facade is new and then everything else inside the building is brand new, so it’s essentially a new building when we get done with it,” Brown said. 

The two-phase project allowed for pharmacy program students and some administrative staff whose office is at the Metro Center, to move into the west third of the building when renovations began in summer 2023.

“But at semester break, we moved into the remodeled side (the east two-thirds of the Metro Center),” Brown said. “Now they’re working on that west third where we used to be.” 

Keeley Klein is a fifth-year pharmacy student and says she’s enjoyed not having to “fight for a study room like you do in the library.” She said a lot of students use the study rooms early in the morning and in between classes. 

“It is very nice because we have, I would say about 15 to 20 different breakout rooms that we can utilize,” Klein said. 

The nursing and pharmacy programs have existed in Sioux Falls for over three decades, but not in central locations like the Metro Center. Dan Hansen, the J. Bruce Laughery Endowed Dean and professor of pharmacy practice, said more than 20,000 vehicles pass by the busy intersection each day, giving the Metro Center a high profile in the state’s largest city. 

Hansen said having the opportunity to be located near health systems like the Veterans Affairs Medical Center – Sioux Falls, Sanford, Avera and Lewis Drug is “game changing.” 

Mary Anne Krogh, the Roberta K. Olson Endowed Dean of the College of Nursing, echoed this sentiment.

“I’m really excited about it (the Metro Center) for the visibility piece,” Krogh said. “We’ve been in Sioux Falls for decades, but people don’t know we’re there.”

The nursing program is currently housed on Southeast Technical College’s (STC) campus in Sioux Falls, and Krogh said they’re “bursting at the seams” at STC. 

“For example, our advanced practice nursing program, which is family nurse practitioner and mental health practitioner, has no space to do any simulation at all,” Krogh said.

The Metro Center will provide six clinic rooms, allowing for undergraduate and graduate students to do simulations there. Krogh said the facility will also have a “PRISM Room.” The PRISM is an immersive simulation room designed to put students in any setting. 

“It really gives us much more opportunities to be innovative in how we approach simulated experiences for our students,” Krogh said.

Krogh said the nursing program anticipates move-in to be in the last half of July.

The nursing and pharmacy programs existing in the same building will, according to President Dunn, better simulate the students’ daily lives in their future careers. 

“All of those folks are integrated real seamlessly in a hospital, but in our training, historically it’s been kind of siloed up, and nurses are here and pharmacists are there,” Dunn said. 

Hansen said the facility will offer lecture spaces along with learning simulations for many different environments including clinics, physician’s office, home health and inpatient care.

The Metro Center is also a place that Dunn said could be used for the community and events. This includes classrooms when they’re not in use, specifically an all-glass classroom in the southeast corner of the building. 

There are no current plans to teach other SDSU academic programs in the Metro Center, although Dunn said there will be three or four administrators who will be in the facility. 

“People who are interested in coming to SDSU can facilitate those connections out of there (the Metro center),” Dunn said. 

“We want to build stronger relationships with Sioux Falls leaders,” Dunn added, “and this will be a place for us to do that.”