A hallway is shown during a preview tour of the Kirk Kerkorian Medical Education Building Friday, Sept. 30, 2022. The $120 million education building is scheduled to open on Oct. 5.
Saturday, Oct. 1, 2022 | 11:08 a.m.
UNLV’s medical school building is almost ready.
The six giant tablet computers where students will do virtual cadaver dissections are in place at the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine at UNLV, as are the illuminated abstract trees on the terrace where students will relax. Chairs are tucked neatly against tables in classrooms and the water runs strong out of the faucets on the scrub sink outside the state-of-the-art simulated operating room.
Nevada Health and Bioscience Corporation, the project's developer, will host on Wednesday a private grand opening gala of the $125 million, 130,000-square-foot Kirk Kerkorian Medical Education Building. It will be a first-look for community leaders and university officials of one of the jewels in the crown of the refreshed Las Vegas Medical District. It will begin hosting students for classes in January.
“This is a testament to the people who believed in this 14, 15 years ago who put their names and reputations on the line to make this happen,” said Lindy Schumacher, a board member of the nonprofit Nevada Health and Bioscience Corp. development agency, which is overseeing the public-private construction project.
The Kerkorian School of Medicine admitted its first students in 2017 and has since sent two cohorts of young medical doctors to residencies. Early students have shared space with the nearby UNLV dental school.
While plastic sheeting still surrounds the helical staircase connecting the third floor to a mezzanine, the building is all but done. With five stories of classroom, lab, study, social and office space, UNLV can soon admit classes of 120 students at a time, doubling its current capacity.
Maureen Schafer, Nevada Health and Bioscience Corp.’s chief executive, said the building is coming in about $2 million under budget and two years before deadline. Another board member, Kris Engelstad, noted that being both early and under budget is rare for such a major construction project.
On a building tour Friday, Schafer showed off the full-scale operating room — “It’s extraordinarily invaluable for helping the students prepare themselves” — and patient rooms where students will work on mannequins.
There’s a small gross anatomy lab, where donated human bodies will offer irreplaceable experience for surgeons in training. For all other students, there’s the virtual anatomy lab, where they can examine the interior and exterior structures of the body, scanned and digitized for study on a touch-screen tablet about 3 feet by 5 feet.
The building has a large meeting room but no cavernous lecture halls of traditional academia. The school follows a curriculum where first and second-year students work in small groups to solve hypothetical problems.
The centerpiece of the building is the ground-floor “forum,” a gathering spot that resembles an amphitheater and looks onto a landscaped terrace through floor to ceiling windows that lift up like a garage door to blend the indoor and outdoor spaces during mild weather.
Schafer said the building is both “serious” and welcoming, with social spaces bathed in natural light and facing only-in-Vegas Strip views to “put its arms around the students” during their intense studies.
Schumacher said that paying for the building was the easy part — the hurdles were in getting construction started as cost estimates yo-yoed and thought leaders initially wondered why the medical school at UNR wasn’t enough for Las Vegas, a 2.2-million-resident metropolis some 7 hours south of Reno.
Workers broke ground in October 2020. The Nevada Health and Bioscience Corp. raised more than $150 million from private donors in addition to $25 million from the state. It will lease the building to the university for $1 per year.
Inspired by the build, Nevada Health and Bioscience Corp. will next turn its attention to an ambulatory care clinic and pathology lab. The clinic and lab, within walking distance of the medical school, are in the design phase and infused with $70 million in state funds.
