Paramedics, nurses to get new home at Mat-Su College

PALMER — Mat-Su College has officially started work on a $3.5 million expansion of Snodgrass Hall.

The expansion will create a home for the paramedic and nursing students. Medical education is a natural fit for the college considering that Mat-Su Regional Medical Center — which partners with the college especially in the nursing program — is a mile away, Mat-Su College Director Talis Colberg said.

That proximity is something economic development professionals and public educators in other communities dream of.

“They love to have what they call ‘university-medical’ districts, and that’s what we logically are getting towards,” Colberg said.

He said construction will proceed through the summer and probably wrap up in the fall. So, no fall move-in for the programs.

“It’s possible, but that’s not the timetable that I would expect,” Colberg said, adding a spring-semester move-in date is more plausible.

The money for the building comes from a raft of voter-approved state bonds that includes a number of state university projects. For the paramedical students, the expansion means education is getting even more hands-on.

“The new set of rooms includes an actual (simulated ambulance bay) as if it were the real location for an ambulance, so they can practice and learn how to deal with ambulances and an ambulance could literally drive in there for practice use,” Colberg said.

For prospective nursing students, it means more room and shorter waiting lists.

“The nursing program (can) expand its cohort from eight to 16 students,” Colberg said.

Colberg said that at Wednesday’s ribbon-cutting ceremony he pointed out that the Mat-Su Borough actually deserves quite a bit of credit for the paramedical program. The borough yearly pays $100,000 for a teaching position in that program.

“A little bit of seed money from the borough has created big, big things here,” he said.

In a press release, he adds that “the University of Alaska very much appreciates such opportunities for community engagement and looks forward to more in the future.”

And it’s starting to bear fruit. One of the paramedics on hand to celebrate the ribbon-cutting — a borough paramedic — went through the Mat-Su College program.

The expanded hall doesn’t just expand the programs. It has room for existing staff as well. Which means that their old spaces are free for different programs. That means more free rooms, but also more free offices.

“Since we have an incrementally expanding faculty pool we have an ongoing need for office space,” Colberg said.

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