Voters in Pima County may be asked to approve a community college campus that would consolidate 24 programs that educate thousands of students in nursing and other health-related fields.
If approved, Pima Community College would build the 120,000-square-foot facility adjacent to the county’s Kino hospital. The campus would house new state-of-the art labs and all the college’s existing health-education equipment.
The college would administer the facility under a long-term lease with the county, with annual maintenance and operation costs covered by student tuition, state funding and property taxes.
Chancellor Roy Flores recently announced the $35 million proposal, which could be on the ballot for the county’s 2008 bond election.
The campus would bring together all the college’s health programs at one location and allow each program to grow by about 25 percent.
The programs currently have about 2,000 students enrolled, 450 in nursing alone. The health campus would be the college’s seventh, but the first devoted to just one general subject area.
The campus is expected to help address the growing shortage in health-care workers, particularly nurses.
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