4 schools, 1 home: Inside the new $70M building officials say will turn Camden into a biomedical hub

By Michelle Caffrey – Reporter, Philadelphia Business Journal

When the idea to reorganize higher education in South Jersey was first introduced more than six years ago, Jack Collins knew executing the plan wouldn’t be easy. The former longtime state Assembly speaker was asked to lead the effort as chairman of the new Rowan University/Rutgers-Camden Board of Governors, which was tasked with leveraging the schools’ combined strengths in the health field, but he was well-acquainted with universities' reputation for not playing well with others.

“I thought, ‘Ah I don’t want to be chairman, it’s going to be a battle. Academic institutions, they just, they compete,” Collins told the elected officials, academic administrators and other stakeholders gathered Monday to get a first look at the result of that ambitious partnership — the $70 million, 100,000 square-foot Joint Health Sciences Center now well under construction in Camden.

“You’re crazy!” Rowan President Ali Houshmand interjected in Collin’s comments, drawing laughs.

“What’s happened from [the board’s first meeting] to where we stand today, where we’re going to be in the fall, it’s just been spectacular,” Collins continued. He heaped praise on Houshmand, and Rutgers-Camden Chancellor Phoebe Haddon for bucking expectations, as well as State Senate President Steve Sweeney and U.S. Rep. Donald Norcross, who spearheaded the Medical and Health Sciences Education Restructuring Act that created the joint board while a state senator, for legislative support.

Located across from the Walter Rand Transportation Center, the Joint Health Sciences Center is slated to open in September, officials said, and will be home to health-focused research and instruction for Rowan, its Cooper University Medical School, Rutgers-Camden and Camden County College.

The combined academic power in the building creates what Dana Redd, CEO of the joint board and former Camden mayor, called a biomedical hub that redefines not only the city of Camden, but the region as a whole.

“We certainly expect that the brightest and the best scientific minds will come here and want to do their research in this state-of-the-art facility, which is the first of its kind in the state of New Jersey because it’s working with institutions and they are collaborating as partners and as a team,” Redd said.

Leaders from the schools spoke Monday about what their students and faculty would be doing in each of their institutions' respective spaces. Rowan’s includes a fully immersive 100-cubic-foot, virtual reality cave. Both Rowan and Rutgers-Camden have separate lab spaces focused on biochemistry, molecular biology and genomics, among other specializations. Simulation rooms complete with realistic, symptomatic medical mannequins will be used to train students at Rowan’s Cooper Medical School, and Camden County College will use both its classroom and simulation labs to double its practical nursing program. Eventually the space will help it create new programs in related fields, like emergency medical technician training.

Officials said the goal isn’t to have the schools just cohabiting under one roof, but to have them sharing space, collaborating across disciplines and producing a result that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Houshmand is “amazingly hopeful” it can happen. Politics may be a part of higher education, but it should remain among administrators, he said. Leave the faculty alone, let them do their work and the institutions will come together.

“I think we’re going to turn this place into a center of major research in medical imaging, in biomedical research, in device development,” he said. “Hopefully one day that research will turn into products and companies and bringing more jobs and more people here. This is only the beginning.”