SYLMAR : Nursing Education Center Dedicated

The dedication may have been delayed, but students have wasted no time in making use of the new Olive View-UCLA Medical Center Nursing Education Center in Sylmar.

The 200,000-square-foot, $1.3-million facility has been open since April, but rainy weather forced repeated postponements of dedication ceremonies.

Supervisor Mike Antonovich and other county officials were on hand at the center Wednesday morning, when the ribbon-cutting finally took place at the two-story, modular building.

The center contains 11 classrooms--including several designed as mock-ups of actual medical labs--as well as a library, computer lab, lounges and conference rooms.

Built with funding from the County Productivity Investment Commission, the facility houses programs from three schools of nursing; the Casa Loma College Licensed Vocational Nursing program, the County School of Nursing Registered Nurse Program--which is a satellite of the County-USC Medical Center--and the UCLA Medical Center Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist program.

Students in the anesthetist program get free tuition in exchange for two years of service in county medical facilities, explained assistant hospital administrator and project director Marilyn Grunzweig.

A number of affiliated nursing programs also use space in the building, said administrative assistant Meghan Lepper. Two hundred faculty, staff and students now use the facility. “For all of them, it means a close affiliation with Olive View,” said Antonovich, who supported funding the facility. “As supervisor, one of my goals was to relieve the nursing shortage experienced by Los Angeles County and improve the quality of services to the San Fernando Valley.”

Also attending the ceremony were County Health Services Director Robert Gates and Walter Gray, county assistant director of personal health services.