Anne Arundel Community College Opens New Health Sciences Building in Arnold

Anne Arundel Community College celebrated the opening of a new health sciences building on its Arnold campus this week, a $52 million facility that college officials say will nearly double the number of students the school can train in nursing, radiologic technology, and other allied health programs.

The three-story building includes simulated hospital rooms, a mock emergency department, and dedicated labs for respiratory therapy and dental hygiene students, replacing outdated facilities that college administrators said had not been meaningfully updated since the 1990s. Waitlists for the college's nursing program had grown to more than two years in some tracks before the expansion was approved.

"We were turning away qualified applicants every single semester, not because they weren't good students, but because we physically didn't have enough clinical lab space to train them," said the college's vice president of health sciences. "This building exists because Anne Arundel County hospitals told us directly that they needed more graduates than we could produce."

Luminis Health, which operates Anne Arundel Medical Center, contributed funding toward the building and will provide clinical placement slots for students in several of the new programs. College officials estimate the expanded programs will add roughly 300 additional student seats across the health sciences division once fully phased in over the next two academic years.

Anne Arundel County officials described the new building as a direct response to regional healthcare staffing shortages that have strained local hospitals since the pandemic. College leadership said applications for the nursing program have already increased since the building's construction was announced last year.