CROWN POINT | With a beating heart, lifelike pulse and the ability to simulate heart failure, asthma and other ailments, medical mannequin METIman was lifted into a hospital bed at the newly opened University of St. Francis campus in Crown Point.
Dubbed Prince Charming by staff, the dummy will be used to help train nurses at the campus, where classes got under way Monday and officials gathered Friday to dedicate and bless the facility.
The campus will serve a record enrollment of 141 in the 15,000-square-foot building constructed over the past four months on a site on the St. Anthony Medical Center Franciscan Point medical complex, just east of the Interstate 65 and U.S. 231 intersection.
Officials showed off classrooms stocked with the latest technology, including the ability to teleconference with instructors at the university's main campus in Fort Wayne.
The university invested in the new campus after enrollment quickly outgrew the St. Anthony hospital classrooms, which initially hosted the nursing school.
The campus, with capacity for 350 students, attracts enrollment because of its small class sizes and something more, nursing program director Margaret Stoffregen-DeYoung said.
"We have a set of core values," she said. "Everyone is respected. It's something we instill in all our classes."
The campus boasts eight classrooms, a computer lab and resource center, along with a library and small chapel.
Its construction was a culmination of a partnership that began in 2004 in a conversation between Sister M. Aline Shultz, vice president of corporate communications for St. Anthony parent Sisters of St. Francis Heath Services, and Sister M. Elise Kriss, University of St. Francis president, officials said at a September groundbreaking for the school.
The spring semester includes not only nursing but other health-related fields, including a master's degree in health care administration.
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