dbeard@dominionpost.com
MORGANTOWN – WVU Medicine cut the ribbon on Thursday on its brand-new Center for Nursing Education. Members of the first student cohort, faculty and staff, WVUM and WVU leaders gathered to celebrate and marvel at the carefully designed, high-tech, comfortable school.
In March 2024 The Dominion Post toured a 37,000-square-foot maze of antiseptic blue-tiled hallways and sterile white labs and pill-making chambers at the back end of the basement of the former Mylan plant. Metal framing, stacks of drywall, bare cement block walls and the smell of plaster pointed to its potential.
Now the potential is realized: classrooms, a skills lab, a virtual reality lab, hospital room simulation labs with animatronic robot patients that can shake hands and answer questions, a student lounge, laundry, shower, gym, food pantry, a mother’s room, a wellness center and more.
Melanie Heuston, WVU Health System chief nursing executive, said that when she was hired 2 ½ years ago, she thought it would take three to five years to make the school a reality. But WVUM President and CEO Albert Wright wanted it sooner, and they did it.
“What we’ve done in 2 ½ years is monumental,” she said. “Don’t ever underestimate WVU Medicine. When people say you can’t do it, you can.”
Heuston hired Tanya Rogers, assistant vice president of nursing education, to run the school
Rogers said, “I remember the day I was offered this job and I knew it was going to be special.”
To meet the state’s and specifically WVUM’s nursing shortage, they designed a school that would break down barriers blocking students from becoming nurses, such as time, money and family obligations.
There are people who’ve wanted to be nurses but weren’t able to go to school for various reasons, she said, including money and time. Along with the 24/7 access to the amenities already mentioned, the center will have a tuitionless option, with fees, uniform and book costs all covered if the students agree to a three-year work commitment with WVU Medicine.
Wright said that along with helping to solve the problem of the perpetual nursing shortage, the center will help WVUM meet its two-prong mission to improve the health trajectory of the state and surrounding areas, and carry out WVU’s teaching mission.
The center is designed to handle up to 200 students, he said, and the program will be able to branch out to other WVUM campuses through the center’s connectivity and virtual capabilities.
The center weaves among the former factory’s windowless basement hallways, but it doesn’t feel like a basement. Rogers said, “A lot of our design was aimed to bring the outdoors in and mitigate that feeling.”
There is abundant live greenery, photo skylights that project views of clouds floating in sunny skies, and even circadian rhythm lighting that changes warmth to mimic the outside.
More than 650 people applied for the first cohort of 24 students. Applicants had to go through virtual and in-person interviews.
The cohort includes 10 West Virginia residents, seven from Pennsylvania and one from California. They range in age from 17-40 and nine are first-generation college students, while 13 already have som higher education.
This was the students’ first time seeing the center, and two of them talked about what brought them here.
Mary-Kate Bostick is from Beckley and has worked as a business analytics manager for a tourism company.
“I think it’s important to keep your community safe and healthy, and I wanted to have a greater hand in that,” she said. “Every little thing is thought out. They’ve removed any barriers that I can possibly run into and that’s truly what drew me here.”
Megan Townsend is a Hurricane native living in Morgantown. She’s worked at Ruby for three years in registration, and is pursuing a master’s in healthcare administration.
She always thought administrative work was her career, but she did an internship in Pittsburgh last summer working with nursing leaders. “I saw nursing and leadership come together, and I realized that’s what I wanted to do, and I needed this clinical background. This was the perfect fit.”
Both students marveled at the warm, bright, non-basement feel of the center. Bostick said she was overwhelmed. And Townsend said, “I think it’s clear that they have spared no expense.”
Classes start Aug. 25. And applications for the Fall 2026 cohort open in August.
