Drew University to build research, nursing facility

At Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science, the announcement Friday that construction would soon begin on a $43-million research and nursing school building did more than lift spirits around the campus.

It gave the medical school an opportunity to boast about a number of firsts.

The building represents the largest investment in South Los Angeles in decades. The new school will be the first comprehensive training facility for nurses to be built in California in several years and the first ever in that community. It’s the university’s first research facility and the first new building on campus in 25 years.

The building is being funded by a $43-million state bond offering issued by the California Educational Facilities Authority, which assists private, nonprofit institutions of higher learning.

“We are moving into the sunshine,” said Susan Kelly, the president and chief executive of Charles Drew University who helped close the deal last year and led Friday’s groundbreaking ceremony attended by more than 200 guests.

The new project symbolizes the university’s “dedication, commitment, resilience and tenacity,” she said, adding: “If you’re not holding on with your fingernails, you’re taking up too much space.”

The school has had its share of troubles.

Going back to the 1980s it had periodic credentialing crises for various residency programs. For years, the two-year medical school was affiliated with the embattled Martin Luther King Jr. hospital in Willowbrook. In late 2006, Los Angeles County severed the public hospital’s ties to the school and pulled funding for about 250 medical residents when the hospital was severely downsized. The nonprofit university scrambled to find places for its residents.

It has overcome accreditation problems and, in partnership with UCLA (students go to UCLA the first two years and Drew the next two), has continued training medical students to become physicians practicing in underserved communities.

The new 63,000-square-foot building that will house the research center and nursing school is scheduled to be completed in fall 2009.

The science research facility will specialize in the study of hypertension, diabetes, cancer and other ailments that disproportionately affect largely poor and minority communities.

The Mervyn M. Dymally School of Nursing -- named after the longtime politician who as a state senator wrote the legislation 40 years ago that created Drew -- will begin accepting 40 students for the first class next year.

Dymally, now a Democratic state assemblyman from Compton, participated in the groundbreaking ceremony and received a standing ovation when his name was announced.

“This is not only a historic date,” he said of the new building. “This is a remarkable date.”

The research and nursing facility is a key component of an initiative to expand the university. Dymally promised to work hard to restore the status of King as a full-service hospital and to create a four-year medical school at Drew. Last week, negotiations with a small private hospital to reopen the King hospital collapsed.

Charles Drew University, created after the Watts riots of 1965, has graduated more than 500 medical doctors and thousands of physician specialists and assistants since 1971.

Gail Orum-Alexander, the dean of the college of science and health who is heading the effort to implement the nursing program, said the announcement has raised morale at the university.

She said the new school will help underserved minority areas.

“This is exciting,” she said. “It represents a tremendous opportunity to address the shortage of nurses.”

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john.mitchell@latimes.com