CLARKSVILLE, TN – In the fall of 2025, Austin Peay State University students will likely take classes and help local community members in an impressive new campus showpiece – an iconic, glass and brick Health Professions Building. Earlier this month, the Nashville-based Hastings Architecture and the Maryland design firm Ayers Saint Gross released initial conceptual renderings for the facility, which proposes a bold design for Austin Peay’s newest building.
“What they provided is not the final design for this project, but the Health Professions Building should look very similar to these images,” Marc Brunner, director of APSU Capital Planning, Design and Construction, said.
In April 2021, the Tennessee General Assembly approved funding for the state-of-the-art facility, paving the way for the University to consolidate its growing healthcare-related programs – nursing, allied health sciences, health and human performance, psychological science and counseling and social work – under one roof.
“This new facility will not only transform our campus – both physically and academically – it will improve public health for our neighbors, friends and family,” APSU President Michael Licari said last spring. “Students will collaborate with others in different fields, making them better healthcare professionals, and the building will provide important public clinical space to serve different populations, including veterans and low-income citizens.”
Construction of the 114,000-square-foot building will begin later this year on Eighth Street, just north of the Maynard Mathematics and Computer Science Building. Once completed, it will feature research labs, active learning classrooms and collaborative learning spaces.
In November 2020, the Clarksville-Montgomery County Community Health Foundation committed $3 million to the Austin Peay State University Foundation to establish the CMC Community Health Foundation Equipment & Building Fund. This gift went toward, and actually exceeded, the University’s funding match, required by the state.
“The planned Health Professions Building at APSU will not merely house distinct healthcare-related programs; it will allow us to revolutionize how we train future healthcare professionals,” Dr. Nicole Knickmeyer, chair of the APSU Department of Psychological Science and Counseling, said. “The new building is designed with innovation in mind by creating spaces that promote the development of interprofessional skills and competencies.
“An example of this is the planned training clinic that will operate within the new building,” she continued. “This clinic will allow APSU to meet a great need in the community by providing a range of healthcare services to community residents. Trainees from our M.S. in Counseling, PsyD in Counseling Psychology, masters in speech language pathology, and psychiatric nurse practitioner programs will have an opportunity to develop interprofessional skills alongside those of their respective disciplines. These opportunities will nurture graduates who enter their fields with a mindset that is oriented toward integrated care from the get-go.”
