By Tom Wilemon - The Daily News -

Help is on the way for the nursing shortage in Shelby County.

Having raised $10 million toward a $16.75 million goal, Southwest Tennessee Community College can start construction on the first phase of a new nursing, natural sciences and biotechnology building.

The college has set a groundbreaking ceremony for Aug. 12 at 10 a.m. on the nursing component of the structure. Once completed, the bigger facility will allow the college to accommodate 400 nursing students – a 45 percent increase over its current capacity.

The three-story structure will go at 675 Union Ave. Fleming Associates/Architects P.S. designed the building, but a contractor has not been selected.

“We will have a bidding process to determine who the contractor will be,” said Karen Nippert, vice president of Institutional Advancement at Southwest. “We will begin clearing and preparing the property, but in terms of a contractor, that’s several months away.”

The launch of the project is an achievement for the college and the larger Memphis medical community and local private foundations, which raised money for the first phase of the project. Medtronic Inc. kicked off the fundraising campaign with $1 million; FedEx Corp. followed with $2 million. Other significant contributors included Baptist Memorial Health Care and Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare.

Last fall, the $10 million was reached through those private contributions, grants and federal and state appropriations.

“These are certainly challenging financial times, but we have found that when we present the need for nurses in this community and we present that we have the ability to train more nurses, educate more nurses and put them into the work force with an RN degree in two years, we found that people responded very positively,” Nippert said.

Southwest has established a reputation as a center for nursing. Last year, 100 percent of its graduates passed the state RN exam.

The structure will go where International Auto Sales once was.

Once completed, the structure will have a teaching auditorium with 250 seats, four lecture rooms, a computer/tutorial lab for 100 students, four nursing skills labs, a biotechnology lab with prep room, an office suite for faculty and staff and access on all three levels to the future natural sciences wing.

The Southwest Foundation still needs to raise $6.57 million for the second phase of the building. Contributions can be made by going to southwest.tn.edu and clicking on “giving to the college” or by calling Nipper at 333-4238 for more information.