OCC To Cut Ribbon On New $18.5M Health Building

The new H. Hovnanian Health Sciences Building at Ocean County College. (Photo courtesy OCC)

The ribbon will be cut May 9 on the new $18.5 million Health Sciences Building that has risen near the Gateway Building on the expanding Ocean County College campus.

With a ribbon cutting and naming ceremony scheduled for Wednesday, the H. Hovnanian Health Sciences Building is named after the Hirair and Anna Hovnanian Foundation’s namesake. The foundation gifted a $3.75 million grant to support the College’s health sciences programs.

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The 47,000 square foot, three-story building is a major upgrade to health services training that was held previously in a single-story building built in 1970 at the Toms River campus.

The new building includes Nursing Skills Labs with 30 hospital beds and training equipment, Simulation Labs with programmable mannequins that react to students’ actions, a CPR Training Room, Phlebotomy Lab and Medical Coding Computer Lab, a fitness room, public wellness center/clinic and Continuing and Professional Education Lab with Exam Rooms.

In its press release, OCC estimated 600 to 800 students would be served by the building’s resources.

“The new H. Hovnanian Health Sciences Building will help promote the health sciences, allowing Ocean County College to expand its program offerings to include not only nursing but the allied health curricula,” said Dr. Jon H. Larson, OCC President, in a prepared statement.

The Health Sciences Building is one of several projects recently underway on the campus, which has also overhauled its original Academic Building. There’s also a planned construction of a $8 million Performing Arts Academy, as part of a partnership with Ocean County College and the Ocean County Vocational Technical School.

In the case of the Health Sciences Building, the majority of the projectwas funded by Chapter 12 which is supported 50 percent by the state and 50 percent by the county. Besides the county freeholders’ power to appoint eight of the 12 members of the College’s Board of Trustees, the freeholder board regularly supports the initiatives of the campus, and one of its buildings, Bartlett Hall, is named for the longtime elected official and current Freeholder Liaison to OCC, John C. Bartlett Jr.

“The College is grateful to the County of Ocean for its unwavering support of OCC’s campus,” said Sara Winchester,Executive Vice President of Finance & Administration, in a prepared statement to ShoreBeat.

The college is gearing up for the fanfare of its naming ceremony for the newest building just as it prepares for the fanfare of Commencement Week, with the OCC Commencement Ceremony for graduates coming May 24.

Scholarships, funded by donors such as the Hovnanians, help a large number of students afford their OCC tuition. The Hovnanian Foundation gift will be considered an endowment through the Ocean County College Foundation.

“The Ocean County College Foundation is honored to have received such a generous gift from The Hirair and Anna Hovnanian Foundation. This endowment will ensure our foundation is able to provide scholarships for our School of Nursing as well as all of our offerings in the health sciences for generations to come,” said Ken Malagiere, Executive Director of the Ocean County College Foundation, last month when the college announced the donation. “The training and skills learned from all of the programs this gift will support directly impact the lives of our students pursuing a career in the ever growing field of healthcare.”

The $3.75 million from the Hovnanian Foundation is divided into $2.5 million given as an Endowment to grant scholarships to attendees of the College’s health sciences programs, and $1.25 million has been approved for healthcare programs at Ocean County College.