HERSHEY -- During this weekend's University Board of Trustees meeting, members discovered many signs of booming changes at the University's Hershey Medical Center that have resulted from a three-year $214 million building project.

"Over the past decade, the medical center had outgrown its boundaries --there was no room for the development of new programs and old programs couldn't expand," said Dr. C. McCollister Evarts, senior vice president for health affairs and dean of the College of Medicine at the medical center.

Medical center officials hope the completed and planned improvements will enhance the center's standing and attract top scientists and teachers to the center -- catalyzing an "educational reform that will be very exciting for students to participate in," Evarts said.

The changes will also provide for much-needed updating and space at the center, said Steve Garban, senior vice president for finance and operations and the University's treasurer.

The center, founded in 1967, currently operates from 90 to more than 100 percent occupancy, Garban added, calling the project "an investment in the future."

With the planned expansion and renovations, the medical center would have a separate outpatient building, a guest house for patients and their families, a new building for the school of nursing, renovated cafeterias, a health sciences research park and a new administrative building, Evarts said.

The project would also relocate one of the medical center's physical rehabilitation programs, now at nearby Elizabethtown Hospital, to the center, Garban said. The program works to rehabilitate crippled children.

Garban said many of these additions would be completed by the end of the decade.

The building project has already provided the medical center with the Fitness Center for the recreation of staff, students and employees, and Life Lion helicopters used for emergency transport, Evarts said.

The medical center also named Dr. Robert C. Aber as the new associate dean for student and alumni affairs, Evarts announced at the meeting.

Under his new position, Aber will be responsible for the recruitment of medical students and the administration of the student and alumni affairs offices.

Aber, who started at the center as an assistant professor in infectious diseases in 1976, said his new position has thrown him "a steep learning curve."

"Three months into the position, I'm still trying to identify issues that need to be carefully analyzed and perhaps readdressed to relate to student needs," he said.