A Sparkling Start to Spring: UVA’s Fairfax RN to BSN Cohort Begin Classes in New NoVa Digs

With the scent of fresh paint, new furniture, and carpet, 10 RN to BSN students in the Northern Virginia cohort began their first day of spring classes in sparkling new environs yesterday: UVA’s Northern Virginia complex in Fairfax, on Innovation Drive, the University’s first-ever satellite campus.

"Thoughtful and well-designed."

Dean Marianne Baernholdt of the new UVA Northern Virginia campus, UVA's first-ever satellite site

The new 55,000 square-foot digs—which officially open Feb. 28 in a ceremony with University leaders, faculty, alumni, students, and friends—will house degree and non-degree programs from nine of the University’s 12 schools, including students in the School’s RN to BSN program, a part-time, two-year program pathway for nurses with associates degrees or nursing diplomas to earn a BSN.

The facility, also the academic home to graduate students from Fairfax enrolled in UVA Engineering programs, and, in the future, public health programs, will also serve as home for the DC Hoos alumni group, provide networking opportunities, space for University-led gatherings and retreats, and much more. The campus is part of the Inova Center for Personalized Health, and boasts a hospital connecter, a cafeteria, study and gathering spaces, a “living wall,” as well as thoughtful, high-tech classroom design and ample free parking.

Present at the ribbon-cutting were School and UVA Health nursing leaders, including Dean Marianne Baernholdt, UVA Community Health chief nursing officer Michelle Strider, Sara Hallowell, associate dean of undergraduate programs, as well as lead RN to BSN faculty member Gretchen Wiersma, UVA Northern Virginia director Julie Sara Boyd, Eyad Abdel, UVA Health Prince William Medical Center's senior director of nursing, and many others.

Baernholdt, who called the learning space “thoughtful and well-designed,” added that it’s well-suited to meet the needs of working nurses attending their courses in-person once-a-month comfortably, collaboratively, and in style.

“We’re proud that our nursing students are among the first to get to make this extraordinary new space their new academic home,” Baernholdt said, “and thankful to have the support and growing infrastructure to truly meet nurses and nursing students precisely where they are.”

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