College of Lake County Opens New Nursing Simulation Lab in Grayslake

College of Lake County celebrated the opening of a new nursing simulation lab on its Grayslake campus this week, a $10 million facility that college officials say will nearly double the number of students the school can train in nursing and allied health programs.

The two-story addition includes simulated hospital rooms, a mock emergency department, and dedicated labs for respiratory therapy students, replacing outdated facilities that college administrators said had not been meaningfully updated in more than two decades. Waitlists for the college's nursing program had grown substantially in recent years before the expansion was approved.

"We were turning away qualified applicants every single semester, not because they weren't good students, but because we physically didn't have enough clinical lab space to train them," said the college's vice president of health sciences. "This building exists because Lake County hospitals told us directly that they needed more graduates than we could produce."

A regional hospital system contributed funding toward the building and will provide clinical placement slots for students in several of the new programs. College officials estimate the expanded programs will add roughly 180 additional student seats across the health sciences division once fully phased in over the next two academic years.

Lake County officials described the new lab as a direct response to regional healthcare staffing shortages that have strained local hospitals in recent years. College leadership said applications for the nursing program have already increased since the lab's construction was announced last year.