SATIRE – APRIL FOOLS
It is finally happening: The University of Louisiana at Lafayette is extending its graduate school opportunities by opening its very own medical school, The Rovkar School of Medicine (RovSM).
RovSM is currently planned to be established at 102 Cajundome Blvd, Lafayette, LA 70506, with the main campus being the first to go into construction, next to the Blackham Coliseum.
This four-year medical institute will be exclusively for UL Lafayette students for the time being, with world-class technology that will provide them with a rigorous and well-rounded medical education.
RovSM’s main campus will be a four-story building, with each floor dedicated to unique educational and student growth disciplines. The first floor will primarily consist of a lounge and student center, with a food court including a variety of meal options, individual and group study rooms, several charging stations as well as a “Re-Set” room, where students can check out their own small cubicle room to rest after a long day and even take a nap.
The first floor will also be part of the Rovkar Medical Library, which fully extends to the fourth floor. The first-floor library will be a casual, scholarly setting with a coffeehouse and bean bags around the library for students to sit, read and study.
The second floor of the main campus will be for classrooms, approximately 25 on this floor and 25 more on the third floor. The intent of building many classrooms, shared Mudy Krey, the medical director of RovSM, is so that “Students and professors can have smaller class sizes and a better learning experience.” The second floor will also house the Rovkar Dean’s Offices, Student Health and Counseling Union and some faculty offices.
Rovkar Medical Library’s second floor section will also be present, which will be dedicated as a more studious area but will also have places for food and beverage.
Moving to the third floor, students will find 25 more classrooms along with three lecture halls, or auditoriums. More faculty and administrative offices will also be on this floor.
Students will find the third section of library here too, providing them with a more intensive study and research location–most textbooks needed for classrooms will be on the third floor library, as RovSM plans to never require its medical students to buy resources themselves; all textbooks and learning platforms will be provided on behalf of the medical school.
The final floor of the main campus will house advanced medical simulation labs, where students will spend most of their time gaining hands-on experience with not only simulations but also real patients. “RovSM believes that the best medical professionals are the ones who gain a mixed education between technology and reality. Humans are not robots; we are unpredictable, and students cannot handle those unpredictable situations if they only learn off of simulations,” the Director of Medical Learning, Goe Opstle, shared.
Resources for research-based learning required for courses or student clinical research projects will be located on the fourth-floor section of the library.
The biggest highlight of RovSM has to be the 180-ft tube slide that connects the fourth floor of the main campus to RovSM’s Clinical Research Facility down the road towards Bourgeois Park, giving students a grand mode of travel after a long day’s work. Jerry Nose-Goodwill, a sophomore majoring in Biology, shared, “I am super excited for this. This is a great opportunity for me to stay close to home while also continuing my medical education.”
Pickle Funball, a freshman majoring in Psychology, said, “The slide sounds amazing. I really hope they’ll be done by the time I get to medical school because I’d so want to go here.”
Administrative picks and other logistics are still underway. An opening date for RovSM is yet to be announced.