Its walls may be bare and the hallways may still smell of fresh paint, but the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing’s new home has begun the new year open for business.

Over winter break, the school’s faculty and staff moved from the old building on Asbury Circle to the new facility, located at 1520 Clifton Rd. Though there is much moving and settling in yet to be done, the school is ready for classes when the students return Wednesday, Jan. 17.

“It’s fabulous,” Dean Marla Salmon said of the building. Asked what is most different for her personally, she said, “It’s the sense of a wonderful future that is embedded in this building. It’s a statement of great support and optimism from the University and from everybody who’s been involved with it.”

Situated at the corner of campus just across Michael Street from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the new School of Nursing is literally a gateway building to the Emory campus. The “main” entrance to the building—Emory did not want to mar the building’s Clifton side with a driveway or turnaround—is located snugly off of Michael Street close to the Rollins Research Building and the School of Public Health. A paved walkway leads straight to the bridge over the railroad tracks and into the heart of campus.

“The design is in keeping with the Campus Master Plan and the idea of a pedestrian campus,”said Ann Bavier, assistant dean for development.

Just inside the main entrance is a spacious foyer and, appropriately, the school’s admissions office.

Off the foyer is the student lounge—also, Bavier said, deliberately located, as it puts student life front and center in the building’s functionality.

When it comes to classroom and educational spaces, there is simply no comparison between the new building and the old.

“In the other building, we had one lab that was used for everything from teaching anatomy and physiology to teaching nurse practitioners how to do complete physicals,” said Darla Ura, associate clinical professor of nursing.

Now the school has several labs for patient assessment simulation, basic nursing skills, laboratory procedures, and physical examinations. The building’s lecture halls are fitted with the latest technology including podium-controlled audio-visual equipment and desks with connections for laptop computers.

“In hospitals now, patients are more acutely ill, so it’s very difficult to take a student into the clinical setting and have them actually be exposed to real life situations,” Ura said. “What we can do now is simulate an actual clinic environment, and the students, without having the stress of actually working on a person, can take the theory they’ve learned, solidify it, and practice putting it to use.”

The building also features some unique ideas. Its top two floors house faculty and administrative offices, and they can be access-controlled after hours, making the bottom floors available for community use while professors and/or administrators can feel secure working upstairs.

Also, the building’s bottom floor has an underground hallway connecting it to the School of Public Health next door.

Since the new nursing building’s classroom spaces are generally larger than public health’s, the two schools can share space and have a convenient physical connection in inclement weather.

The School of Nursing will hold an official ceremony opening its new home on Thursday, March 1, at 3:30 p.m. The event will be open to the entire Emory campus.