Big things have been afoot at Johnson County Community College. From transformational changes on campus to a revolution in nursing technology, the Overland Park, Kansas, school is making change happen for its students and the community.

In 2016, the board of trustees adopted a $102.6 million facilities master plan and kicked off a $25 million capital campaign. A year later, the campaign was given an enormous boost by the Sunderland Foundation, which made a $10 million lead gift toward the largest transformational project in the college’s history.

That money will go toward the construction of the new Career and Technical Education Center, an approximately 70,000 square foot facility that will house industrial technology programs including automotive and electrical technology, automation engineer technology/industrial maintenance, and heating, ventilation, and air conditioning training. It will also be home to continuing education for industrial programs as part of the college’s response to local workforce needs.

Also in the works is the Fine Arts and Design Studios, an approximately 37,000 square foot building that will also include filmmaking and graphic design programs.

Work on these projects is expected to be completed by the end of 2019, and it’s all being done without raising tuition, says Chris Gray, associate vice president of strategic communications and marketing.

“It’s the result of careful planning on our end,” Gray says. “We take financial stewardship very seriously. This isn’t something we’ve decided to do lightly or overnight.”

Unrelated to the master plan but another boon for the college is the invention of the SAFingerStick, a glucose testing simulation kit for which Johnson County Community College holds the patent. It was developed by nursing professor Kathy Carver and David Zamierowski, a retired plastic surgeon and recent donor to the college.

 The “fake finger” looks and feels like a human finger, to give nursing students practice drawing blood from patients to test their blood sugar. Zamierowski and Carver patented the device in 2012 and donated it to the college’s foundation to sell and use the money for scholarships.

But the college kept the patent and turned it into an educational opportunity for more than just nursing students. The college foundation created a business entity called JC3 Innovations to produce the fake finger, which is made locally, and multiple departments from the college were brought in to work on all aspects of its production, including the name, logo and package design, and the branding. Members of the business department reviewed the contracts.

“We were able to engage graphic design, marketing, nursing, and other faculty to give our students real-life experience of how to engage with outside entities,” including shipping and fulfillment companies, and agencies that did design and logo work, Gray says. “It was a bootstrap project that allowed the college to learn a lot. And the best thing about this is it’s not a money maker. Any funds received, that profit goes straight to student scholarships.”

To date, the college has sold approximately 800 of the fake fingers, with most orders coming from university nursing programs—including Johns Hopkins, UNC-Chapel Hill, and the University of Virginia—for simulated blood drawing. The college also has a distribution agreement with a nursing supply catalog called Pocket Nurse, and orders have come from as far away as Australia and Spain.

“Hospitals and patient education centers are still an untapped market for us,” Gray says. “We’re obviously not a research institution or thought of for research or innovation, but this has opened a lot of doors to give students instruction and get the outside community involved.”