Butaro Academic Campus

In 2019, UGHE officially opened the first phase of its Butaro Academic Campus. The six-building campus in Burera District will help UGHE expand its course offerings over the next several years to meet the growing demand for high-quality health professionals.

Located 80 miles north of Rwanda’s capital city, Kigali, and embedded in a rural primary health care system, the design and location of UGHE’s campus offers students diverse educational opportunities in both clinical and delivery settings. The campus was intentionally built to encourage communication and collaboration across programs, with pathways and nodes integrating common areas with labs and classrooms. Teaching spaces afford students an engaging and hands-on educational environment, while UGHE’s proximity to a hospital serving the local community reflects the University’s commitment to experiential and problem-based learning.

• • The Administrative and Dining Building houses staff and faculty workspaces, meeting rooms, a commercial kitchen and dining hall, a student shop, an ATM, and the offices of the University’s Dean and Vice Chancellor.
  • The Case Study Room is equipped with modern teleconferencing capabilities to facilitate instruction from international experts and clinicians.
  • The Information Commons provides students with quiet study space, team rooms with teleconferencing, medical reference materials, and computer tech support.
  • The Clinical Simulation Center is an interactive training facility to ensure students have extensive practice with realistic patient care scenarios. Its design includes two individual exam rooms, four control rooms, two debriefing rooms with television screens, and two large flexible studios that can be configured to simulate a bed ward, a labor and delivery room, or a procedure room environment.
  • The Science Laboratory hosts diverse laboratory education in the basic sciences, anatomic dissection, and the clinical sciences. The laboratory is equipped for teaching practical sessions in anatomy and histology, biochemistry, microbiology, physiology, pharmacology, and pathology. In addition to a full laboratory, it has a large seminar room for pre- and post-lab activities.
  • The Studio Classroom includes several collaborative working spaces around a central presentation area. The space is configured for flexible seating to allow students and faculty to adjust seating in accordance with instructional needs.
  • Student and Faculty Housing is composed of 12 buildings arranged in clusters that encourage communal living within the campus. The modern two- and four-bedroom units feature kitchen areas, bathrooms, living areas, and outdoor patios. When complete, the initial phase of Student and Faculty Housing will accommodate up to 200 students, faculty, and staff.

Butaro District Hospital, the Cancer Center of Excellence, and Beyond

UGHE’s campus is located across a fertile valley from the Butaro District Hospital and Cancer Center of Excellence, award-winning clinical facilities built by Partners In Health and owned by the Government of Rwanda. UGHE’s clinical students will thus have easy access to a full-functioning district hospital at which to learn and care for patients. In the future, the University will add other hospitals to a nationwide network of clinical learning locations, exposing students to a variety of clinical specialties and increasing the scale and diversity of medical cases available.