Expanded building opens at Mat-Su College

PALMER — Had Mother Nature not intervened, Monday would have been the first day of classes in the new wing of Snodgrass Hall at Mat-Su College.

“That is brand new,” college director Talis Colberg said in Snodgrass Hall Monday afternoon following a tour of the new wing. The college was more-or-less deserted since classes had been cancelled due to the weather.

The classrooms contain state-of-the-art display screens and projectors. One has hospital beds and a full mock-up of a hospital room for nursing students to practice their skills.

Colberg said the new space has allowed the college to double its nursing program from eight students to 16.

The wing also will house the paramedic program, which didn’t grow with the addition but did get much nicer facilities, including a garage in which they will be parking an ambulance.

“The (Mat-Su) Borough is donating an ambulance to us,” Colberg said, standing in the bay.

“This is an instructional room as well as an ambulance bay,” he said, pointing out the projector screen that comes down from the ceiling.

The freed-up space in the other campus buildings, Colberg said, will be partially used to house the campus’ Information Technology department, whose old space will become classrooms.

“It’s creating a nice chain reaction of opportunities,” he said.

It’s also creating more opportunities for partnerships with the Mat-Su Borough and the hospital and some new ones, like the one with the state, which wants to use the new wing as an emergency operations center.

That partnership would involve stashing supplies in the ambulance bay.

“It’s a big facility, it’s a solid facility,” Colberg said of why it was appealing to the state. “It’s not geologically sensitive in that it’s not going to flood here. It’s in the middle of everything.”

Another of the college’s partnerships is behind the other ongoing construction project on campus. The city of Palmer is expanding its water system, running lines by the college and planning to put up a water tower next door.

To get the site ready the city needed a lot of gravel and fill. The college let them pull it from college land if the city would level out the area it cleared. What’s left behind is a great start to a parking lot for the upcoming theater.

“That will be theater parking and it’s huge. Just the right size, actually,” Colberg said.

Asked when that theater project will get under way, he said that bid documents should be out in the spring.

“It’s such an uncertain thing until they break the ground,” he said.

But it will mean big things for the college and the community. Performance groups are already dreaming up new things to do with it. Colberg said he thinks there’s a lot of demand for that. But there’s also a need at the school for functions that the public might want to attend.

“We really can’t invite people very easily here,” he said.

But even without inviting in the public there are definitely times the college could use it.

“If all the staff and faculty were asked to meet at once time they couldn’t meet on this campus,” he said.

Contact reporter Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.