The Michigan College of Optometry build­ing will be fin­ished on Jan. 3, 2011 and Ferris fac­ulty are look­ing for­ward to its completion.

Dr. Mark Swan, a pro­fes­sor in the College of Optometry, said the new facil­i­ties would be able to serve patients more effi­ciently as well as teach students.

“We’ve designed the build­ing to teach our stu­dents and help our patients,” said Swan.

The newly cus­tomized rooms and equip­ments are suited to bet­ter serve patients who visit the eye care clinic.

In the old optom­e­try build­ing, Swan said there were a num­ber of prob­lems with the heat­ing and cool­ing sys­tems, as well as ade­quate space to teach stu­dents and serve patients. In the new build­ing, the heat­ing and cool­ing sys­tems are new and there is more space.

Dr. Sarah Hinkley, an assis­tant pro­fes­sor in the Optometry pro­gram, said, “The new build­ing will allow fac­ulty to teach in a beau­ti­ful, cut­ting edge facil­ity. We know we have an excel­lent, nation­ally respected pro­gram. Now we will have the facil­ity to match the qual­ity of education.”

Hinkley said the new build­ing will con­tain com­put­er­ized visual acu­ity charts in every exam room and have the lat­est diag­nos­tic equip­ment and smart classrooms. “

“In the vision reha­bil­i­ta­tion clin­i­cal area, the build­ing will con­tain a home envi­ron­ment room to teach patients new ways to accom­plish tasks of daily liv­ing despite visual impair­ment,” she said.

Hinkley also said stu­dents will have a large amount of space for relax­ing and study­ing, includ­ing their own mod­ern lounge.

“We’re hop­ing the new facil­ity will bring recog­ni­tion to the com­mu­nity and West Michigan,” said Swan. n