UNC School of Nursing dignitaries, alumni, donors and guests gathered in the Blue Zone on Friday for a groundbreaking — or, more aptly, ground-turning — ceremony for the construction of its new education building.
The renewal of Carrington Hall, home to one of Carolina’s top performing schools, is taking another step forward with construction set to begin on the updated facility. The $94 million project is an effort to increase class sizes and the overall nursing workforce while replacing half of an aging facility and adding 20,000 more square feet than before.
During the ceremony, School of Nursing Dean Valerie Howard said the new education building represents a call to action to help address the ongoing nursing shortage in North Carolina and across the country, while also being an investment in the advancement of patient care.
“This groundbreaking is more than a physical milestone,” the dean said. “It is a symbol of our ongoing commitment to advance health for all. From accessible education and service, through translatable scholarship, through meaningful partnerships — local and global — ensures that Carolina nurses will meet and lead the profession through the challenges of today and those of tomorrow.”
The project has already been underway since March, which started with the demolition of the 55-year-old wing of the building. Now that the process is nearly complete, construction of a 110,000-square-foot facility will begin soon. The new education building will feature not only more space for expanded classes, simulations, and clinical learning, but also updated technology to help students prepare for cutting-edge work and care in their fields. Once finished, it will connect with the wing of Carrington Hall built in 2005 similarly to how the 1969 wing did.
A snapshot of the livestream of Carrington Hall’s demolition, and soon to be construction, site on Sunday, Oct. 27.
Renderings of the new nursing education building planned for UNC’s School of Nursing. (Photo via UNC/Ayers Saint Gross.)
A model at Friday’s ceremony showing how the expansion will connect with the east wing of Carrington Hall and the surrounding medical campus at UNC.
UNC Provost Chris Clemens described the new education facility as “a little bit of the act of imagination, but it’s getting a little more real” with Friday’s ceremony.
“This building project has been a long time coming and it’s great now to see it come to fruition,” he said. “We have a top-ranked public nursing school, and even with subpar facilities and simulation space, we’ve been able to rock in the area of nursing. So, imagine with a state-of-the-art facility, what this school is going to be able to do.”
Current projections of North Carolina’s nursing workforce predict there will be a shortage of 12,500 nurses by 2033. Several studies showed the profession would suffer losses due to attrition rates long before the COVID-19 pandemic led to even more stresses on the industry. The new education building, though, will allow UNC’s School of Nursing to build its student body, with the school saying it hopes to increase enrollment by 50%.
With the demolition of the older wing, though, it means the School of Nursing has already had to operate differently in the last academic year. The original west wing was vacated in October 2023, with faculty and classes being shifted to temporary locations within nearby health sciences and School of Medicine buildings. The nursing simulation lab, meanwhile, moved to the school’s temporary space within ITS Manning off of Manning Drive.
The North Carolina General Assembly committed $45 million to the project back in 2020, with additional support coming from donors — including a $6.8 million gift from the Helene Fuld Health Trust in 2021. The school and university are still seeking $10 million from private donations to cover the remaining costs, according to organizers of the groundbreaking.
Helping fund some of those increased class sizes and opportunities for nursing students, though, is philanthropist William Conway. The billionaire investor was the keynote speaker at Friday’s ceremony and shared his encouragement to nursing students, current professionals, and donors to find ways to step up and help when possible. An undergraduate student in the nursing program, Ricarte Jin Atienza, also spoke as a recipient of a Conway scholarship — describing the tandem of the scholarship program and upcoming new facility as powerful tools to help future members of the healthcare workforce.
“We have the opportunity,” said Atienza, “to redefine nursing for a new era, to lead with integrity, and to improve lives in ways that we can’t even begin to imagine yet. And I’m confident this new nursing education building will be the foundation where this leadership will be cultivated.”
Current projections for the Carrington Hall renewal construction are for the project to be completed in fall 2026.
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