The Future is Now: The Roy Blunt Health Science Building Nears Completion

Roy Blunt Health Science Building Opens 2027 with $60 Million Simulation Labs

Sarah Mills | GlobalBeat

Missouri Southern State University will finish the $60 million Roy Blunt Health Science Building by January 2027, adding 95,000 square feet of nursing and dental labs to its Joplin campus.

The state-funded structure topped out last week, placing the final steel beam on what administrators call the largest health-science investment in the university’s 85-year history.

Nursing enrollment has doubled since 2020, pushing classrooms into trailers and forcing the school to reject 200 qualified applicants last fall. The new building doubles lab capacity and adds robot patients that can bleed, give birth, or go into cardiac arrest on command.

“These simulators cost $150,000 each and speak six languages,” project manager Todd Smith told reporters during a hard-hat tour. “Students will run codes, deliver babies, even code a premature infant before they ever touch a real patient.”

Governor Mike Kehoe signed off on the appropriation in May 2025 after lawmakers linked the funding to a workforce shortage that has left 1,400 nursing and 300 dental hygienist positions open across southwest Missouri. The clinic next door, operated by workforce partner Freeman Health System, plans to hire 80 percent of graduates on the spot.

Construction crews poured the first concrete in March 2025, a pace made possible by a 30-year lease the university signed with the state’s higher-education facilities authority. The deal front-loads cash and bypasses normal bond delays, shaving 14 months off the usual timeline, according to the Missouri Department of Higher Education.

Inside, 24 patient rooms mimic a Level-II trauma bay, right down to the $2 million GE CT scanner donated by the manufacturer. A 140-seat dental hygiene wing will treat 6,000 low-income patients a year, doubling the current student-run clinic load. Faculty offices sit above the labs so professors can watch live feeds instead of cramming into observation decks.

Local tax revenue already spiked. Joplin collected $1.2 million more in sales tax during the first three quarters of 2026, money city manager Sam Anselm attributes to 220 construction workers renting apartments, eating lunch, and buying fuel. “They hit the taco trucks hard,” Anselm said. “We’ve never issued so many temporary food-vendor permits on campus.”

The university’s accreditor, the Higher Learning Commission, placed MSSU on warning status in 2024 after finding “insufficient clinical space” and “overcrowded science labs.” Chancellor Dean Van Galen said the warning will be lifted once the building passes final inspection, a milestone now scheduled for December 2026. “It’s not a maybe. It’s steel in the air,” Van Galen told the board of governors last Friday.

Background

Missouri has hemorrhaged health-care workers since 2022. Census data show 18 percent of rural nurses left the profession, lured by traveling-staff contracts that paid $5,000 a week during the pandemic. State projections say the region will be short 8,000 nurses by 2030 unless programs expand.

The legislature responded in 2025 by carving out $250 million for health-science capital projects, the first new higher-ed construction bond since 2008. The Roy Blunt Health Science Building captured the single largest slice, beating proposals from four larger universities thanks to a bipartisan lobbying push led by State Senator Jill Carter, a Republican whose district includes Joplin.

What’s Next

Faculty hiring starts in March 2027, with postings for 25 tenure-track positions already live. The first classes begin in August 2027, and the university expects 600 additional nursing applications that cycle, enough to wipe out the current wait list and cut regional vacancy rates within three years, according to workforce analysts at the Missouri Hospital Association.

Whether the pipeline holds depends on retention, not just recruitment. Freeman Health System CEO Paula Baker said starting salaries will rise to $78,000 for new nurses, a $6,000 bump funded by a 2026 property-tax levy that county voters approved by 62 percent. “We can train them,” Baker said. “Now we have to keep them off the Gulf Coast travel contracts.”