GRANITEVILLE — May 19 was a day Hannah Williams had been looking forward to for a while.
“I am so overjoyed because this day means growth. It means growth and opportunity for future nurses,” said Williams, dean of Aiken Technical College’s School of Nursing.
On Monday, officials broke ground on a new 30,000-square-foot nursing education center which will include skills and simulation labs, space for auditorium-style seating and additional faculty office space with the aim of helping alleviate the current nursing shortage.
“We’ve got a shortage of about 6,000 nurses across the state, and it’s projected to be about 18,000 in the next 10 years,” said Matthew Merrifield, Aiken Regional Medical Center CEO. “We know we’re in one of the fastest growing regions in the country and so that’s only going to make this shortage more and more challenging.”
Williams said the nursing shortage existed prior to COVID, but the pandemic exacerbated the situation with many leaving the field and bedside care.
Aiken Tech currently offers an associate degree in applied science in nursing and LPN to ADN transition; a diploma in practical nursing and pre-nursing certification. The nursing program shares space with other health sciences curriculum. With a dedicated facility, there will be space to train more students perhaps as much as doubling the amount of students.
It was a long road to get to Monday’s groundbreaking. Funding for the project was allocated by South Carolina lawmakers after the state received $600 million in a settlement from the Department of Energy related to plutonium storage at the Savannah River Site. And a lot of projects vied for that funding.
“I remember very well the amount of work we had, the conference calls, the project lists hearing everything that was going back and forth during that period of time, what other parts of the state wanted, what other counties in the local area wanted, who was going to be included who was not and for what,” said Gary Bunker, Aiken County Council chair.
The nursing building joins several additional projects at Aiken Tech including the renovation of Building A and the construction of the 100,000-square-foot Aiken County Career and Technology Center, which is scheduled for completion in summer 2026.
Charmain Z. Brackett, the publisher of Augusta Good News and Inspiring: Women of Augusta, has covered Augusta’s news for more than 35 years. She’s a Georgia Press Association winner and the recipient of the 2018 Greater Augusta Arts Council’s media award. Reach her at charmain@augustagoodnews.com. Sign up for the newsletter here.
