The 27-storey educational facility will be home to four programs under the Faculty of Community Services, a fabrication zone and 10 state-of-the-art clinical experience suits.
Ryerson’s Church Street Development project will be home to some of the most updated research technologies in Canada.
President Sheldon Levy unveiled the detailed plan on Oct. 22 for the mixed-use facility, which will be located on Church Street just north of Dundas.
Set to open in fall 2018, the 27-storey educational and residential facility will not only be the new home to four programs in the Faculty of Community Services, but 10 state-of-the-art clinical experience suites, modular research labs and a fabrication zone with 3D printers, robotic arms, a laser cutter and a CNC lathe, an advanced machine tool that will help students create prototypes for school and research.
The street-level fabrication zone will be open for student project use. The majority of the other floors will house the schools of nursing, nutrition, midwifery and occupational and public health.
Students in these programs will have access to new labs with updated equipment to encourage inter-disciplinary collaboration.
“We are hoping that, with the building coming together, there will be a lot more opportunities for chance encounters across programs,” said Usha George, FCS dean. “And for both students and faculty to professionally collaborate.”
George said she believes that the facilities in the CSD will motivate and interest students in doing more research, particularly alongside Ryerson faculty.
The new building will centralize the four programs and may impact the future of the curricula as well. For the school of nursing, the CSD will play a role in its current program review.
“We are embarking on a curriculum redevelopment and as we do that, there is certainly the opportunity for us to look at our existing courses and how our curriculum in 2018 might lend itself to the new physical structure of the Church Street Development,” said Don Rose, director of the school of nursing.
The building will hold four new simulation suites for the nursing school, equipped with four practice mannequins.
“For us, in the school of nursing, and perhaps throughout the whole university, it’s the notion of how research informs our teaching and how our teaching informs our research,” said Rose.
This year, Ryerson was named the Top Undergraduate Research University of the Year by Research Infosource Inc.’s annual ranking of Canada’s Top 50 Research Universities. With this new achievement in mind, technology and research will be a major part of the overall development and plan of the CSD.
“It’s a great source of pride for all of us because we have come a long way,” said George. “We hope, with this building, there will be a lot of activity, enthusiasm and a very high level of self-morale for being at Ryerson.”
Building construction is set to begin fall 2015.
Health enthusiast, movie junkie, foodie, technology-addict and reporter for the Ryersonian.
Hye-Jee graduated from the Ryerson School of Journalism in 2015.
