DAVID MAMARIL HOROWITZ

david.horowitz@bgdailynews.com

 

Southcentral Kentucky Community & Technical College received $28 million in state funding it plans to spend on rebuilding its Glasgow health campus.

It’s roughly a third of $90 million that the state legislature allocated to the Kentucky Community and Technical College System from funds initially appropriated via the 2024 legislative session. The remaining $62 million funds two other KCTCS facilities projects; KCTCS previously identified the three projects as priorities.

The funds’ release was dependent on the KCTCS’s work on developing a set of recommendations to improve and advance the college system to better align with the commonwealth’s needs, according to KCTCS.

The SKyCTC funds will go toward phase one construction of a consolidated Glasgow campus in response to high demand in allied health, according to KCTCS. It’ll replace a “severely outdated” health campus within old tuberculosis hospital dormitory facilities and a triple-wide trailer, KCTCS stated.

The Glasgow Health Campus is primarily for the nursing and allied health programs and additionally provides some general education courses for degree completion, Interim SKyCTC President and CEO Brooke Justice said. The rebuilding is expected to enhance the programs and provide more state-of-the-art equipment, she added.

“We look forward to this expansion being an opportunity for students from the surrounding areas, and also from Glasgow specifically, to (…) expand their training and also their skills as well,” Interim SKyCTC President and CEO Brooke Justice said.

SKyCTC doesn’t expect any programs to be discontinued at the campus, and it’s “definitely” looking forward to having the registered nurse, licensed practical nurse, and medical aid programs at the facility, Justice added.

“Those would be programs that we anticipate having demand for in the future, so we’ll be able to serve more students,” she said.

The project is still “in the very early stages,” Justice added — so, details such as the total project cost and timeline are still unknown, she said. The size, she added, will depend on how far the dollars go.

There’s also a greater need for the replacement campus due to population growth in the area stemming from the electric vehicle battery plants in Bowling Green and Glendale, she said.