Alma College opens two new labs

Alma College has opened two new labs for the Fall 2026 semester. One lab is to benefit nursing students and the other is for use by the college’s Great Lakes Watershed Institute. Both new labs are now open on campus and are available to provide students with more experiential learning opportunities.

According to an article on Alma College’s website, Alicia Ryder, who serves as the Director of Nursing and Chair of the Nursing Department, explained the benefits of having a new dedicated nursing lab available on campus. She is quoted as saying, “This lab allows us for the first time ever to teach our nursing skills course here on campus. It’s an amazing opportunity. All nursing skill labs will be taught in this space. Students will learn how to insert a catheter, how to give a tube feeding, how to give a bed bath, how to take a blood pressure reading…They’ll get to practice all those skills. They’ll run through simulations with Susie to figure out what’s wrong and treat her appropriately. The main goal is to improve clinical judgement, because the reality is patient care is getting more complicated, so hospital systems are expecting students to come in as brand-new grads, better prepared and ready to do more things right away.”

Located within the Swanson Academic Center, the new nursing lab contains state-of-the-art nursing equipment that will help prepare student nurses for the type of work they will be doing on a daily basis. The lab has a bladder scanner, an EKG monitor, mechanical lifts, three new low-fidelity, non-electronic mannequins, and one high-tech patient simulator named Susie. Susie costs $35,000 and replicates the types of responses a real human patient would have in a medical setting, including breathing and blinking.

The new lab will allow students to receive all of their clinical training right on campus. Up until this point, students had to travel to the MyMichigan Medical Center in Alma for simulation training. The new lab will allow for more students to practice at one time, with more equipment and larger learning and teaching spaces. It also allows for observation, as the lab is surrounded on three sides by one-way glass to give students and instructors the ability to watch what is being worked on in the lab without interrupting. There is also an intercom to allow for two-way communication between those inside the lab and those viewing from outside.

Ryder said, “The viewing space allows students to learn from each other, so a student can be doing a simulation and everyone else can be observing. Everybody can talk to each other, and decide if the student is performing appropriately. We can make suggestions. It allows us to pretend to be the doctor or the patient, and interact with the practicing student. It’s a learning opportunity in both directions.”

Hannah Hoag, who is the clinical coordinator and simulation technologist, will run the lab. She said, “It allows students to practice in a safe environment, make mistakes, be corrected in the moment, and not harm somebody. The lab is right here on campus, readily available to them and manned by faculty, whenever they want to hone their skills.”

The new nursing lab was funded through donations from Masonic Pathways, alumni donations, and the Donald J. (’71) and Dr. Karen S. Yehle Endowed Fund for Nursing.

The new lab for the Great Lakes Watershed Institute is located in the Dow Science Center and was made possible through an Arthur Vining Davis Foundation grant, the Healthy Pine River Group, the Gratiot Community Foundation, a department of education grant, and gifts from alumni and friends of Alma College.

The Great Lakes Watershed Institute lab is a water quality laboratory that focuses on the Great Lakes and the watersheds that funnel into it. It is the first lab of its kind. It is primarily for use related to watershed research and education, but it will be available to Alma students and faculty members performing related research, which may include business, neuroscience, art and design, communications, and political science.

Murray Borrello is an Instructor of Geology and Environmental Studies and Senior Department Chair. He said of the Great Lakes Watershed Institute, The GLWI intentionally connects classroom learning with real-world problems through the work of an environmental lab and partnerships created between two-year educational institutions and local and national entities. Students and faculty use local and regional problems to shape what is taught in the classroom, and in turn, work with organizations and individuals who are trying to address and solve problems that occur in the watersheds. The GLWI uses a ‘theory-into-practice’ approach of enhanced learning while providing real-world experience for students as they partner with two-year institutions as well as local, regional, and global individuals and organizations focused on improving our environment.”

The GLWI has a partnership with Dow Digital Commons which will allow the lab’s findings and research to be available to municipalities, schools, and non-profit organizations around the United States that are interested in the health of the Great Lakes.

Among the research areas the GLWI will conduct in the new lab is geochemistry, toxicology, microbiology, human health studies, economic studies, and ways to improve K-12 science education.

For more information about Alma College, visit the school’s website.