Best of the West
With the launch of a new curriculum at the School of Medicine comes a long-awaited facility to match.
The new West Wing of Alan Magee Scaife Hall opened its doors in April, with a grand opening planned for later in 2023. The airy, light-filled expansion, built on the existing foundation at Terrace and Lothrop streets, offers seven stories where health sciences students will learn, study, gather and—if you can believe it—even relax.
Katie Maietta, executive director of the Office of Medical Education, compared stepping from the old building into the “bright and beautiful” West Wing to Dorothy’s introduction into the technicolor world of Oz. Among its highlights is the seventh-story anatomy lab. There—past hallway displays featuring cross sections of brains, bodies and other specimens—students dissect cadavers both real and, using virtual reality systems, digital. Nearby, a wet lab spans the width of the building.
Gone are the large, rigid lecture rooms of old. Instead, the West Wing features smaller-scale, flexible learning spaces with partitions and seating that can be adjusted as needed. The rooms square with the new curriculum’s emphasis on more group discussion and active learning.
There is one space equipped to hold a large crowd: A 600-seat auditorium. Fittingly, among its very first uses was hosting the Class of ’23’s Scope and Scalpel performance, “West Wing Story.”
Access to the sixth floor is limited to med students only. There, aspiring doctors can take advantage of group study rooms and a lounge with Ping-Pong and pool tables, a Wii, a lava lamp and a life-size cut-out of Nicolas Cage (reportedly, a specific request from students). Students can snatch a snooze in the sixth-floor quiet room. “Every day I get my half-hour nap in,” says Stephen Frederico, a third-year medical student. Plenty are also making use of the Panera Bread two floors down, as well as the study areas in the Falk Library of the Health Sciences.
Maietta hopes that cross-disciplinary symposia in the building and features like the open, lobby-style seating across multiple floors will encourage more intermingling.
“We’ve really been moving toward more interprofessional education in our curriculum,” she says. “I feel like [the wing] is going to turn into a hub for the health sciences students.”
