Room 172 in the Health and Life Sciences Building has a new name to honor a former nurse who worked as a student success coach at AACC for 10-plus years.

Lorraine Girandola, who died in May at age 87, served as a student success coach for the nursing program. Girandola, a registered nurse with 50 years of experience, won the Florence Nightingale Award for outstanding work in the nursing community. 

Girandola was “an outstanding individual who performed a life of service to help others [for] five decades as a nurse,” Vollie Melson, executive director of the AACC Foundation, said.

Multiple rooms and buildings on campus are named after prominent community members or longtime campus officials.

Sometimes donors pay to have a specific name put on a building. For example, the Clauson Center was named after Janet and James Clauson when they donated $1 million. An anonymous donor paid to have Room 172 named after Girandola.

Melson said sometimes a donor “approaches us and wants to do something special and has had a history of doing something special at the college. What’s really great about that is often you have a close relationship with the donor, and then they’re inviting you in to do something special and they care very much about the institution and the person they want to honor.”

Wendy Thomas, director of development for the AACC Foundation, said donors sometimes ask to have their own names on a building  while others request another individual’s name.

“We have instances where donors want to name a space for someone other than themselves,” Thomas said. “That happens pretty regularly. There are a lot of donors who think of someone who might have … had a positive influence in their lives.”