Leeds Beckett University - City Campus,
Woodhouse Lane,
LS1 3HE
School of Health creating two new specialist teaching facilities
The capital funding scheme has awarded the university’s School of Health with £2million which will ensure the growing student community has access to excellent specialist teaching spaces. It will help Leeds Beckett to meet the local and national workforce shortages of high skilled, highly employable science and health graduates and provide opportunities for more students to train towards these essential professions.
The funding, along with £7million provided by Leeds Beckett themselves, will be used to build a new Clinical and Multiprofessional Skills Suite and a further Biomedical Sciences teaching laboratory.
The Clinical and Multiprofessional Skills Suite is a large space which creates an authentic learning and practise environment for students across nursing, allied health professions (including occupational therapy, physiotherapy, and dietetics and speech and language therapy), sport and exercise therapy, and wider health courses. The space will house two ten-bed hospital wards, a fully immersive three-bedroom hospital simulation space housing three simulation manikins. It will provide a flexible teaching space which will accommodate an anatomy study space with a state-of-the-art life-size virtual dissection table, and a built-in community living suite for simulation and practise in a home-like environment.
The Biomedical Sciences teaching laboratory will be used by students studying Biomedical Sciences as well as those on nutrition, dietetics, and environmental health courses. The facility will mainly be used for biochemistry, molecular biology, tissue culture and pharmacology. It will house a 60-person laboratory, a tissue culture site, and new state-of-the-art equipment including an imaging flow cytometer (used to detect and measure physical and chemical characteristics of a population of cells and particles). With a dedicated preparation area, and walk-in chemical stores and cold room – the laboratory will be used for lab-based teaching and will also to provide a space for students to contribute to developing the research base in the School through their independent research projects.
Dean of the School of Health, Dr Duncan Sharp, said: “I am delighted the Office for Students has recognised the opportunity enhancing our facilities will provide to our students, and our ability to contribute further to key workforce needs. The pandemic has demonstrated the incredible importance of all health-based disciplines and professions.
“As a School, we are committed to preparing our students for the realities they face in their workplaces. The new Clinical and Multiprofessional Skills Suite and Biomedical Sciences teaching laboratory will ensure our students study in realistic and inspiring environments, and graduate with the skills and confidence to make a difference to individuals, communities, and organisations.
“Key to our growth and great student outcomes is the strong local partnerships we have built over many years – not only has this enabled us to help the response to the pandemic (e.g., through providing workforce and vaccinator training, access to our estate, opportunities for students to contribute to front-line and vaccination delivery), but it is also helping us to support inclusive workforce development approaches.”