On Monday, students enrolled in the Hankamer School of Business will have a new building to call home: Paul L. Foster Campus for Business and Innovation.
The $100 million building took about 18 months to erect, but Terry Maness Dean of the Hankamer School of Business, says the want for a new facility dates back to about 2005.
“We kept adding, I think quality programs but we had the same square footage. So it got to be a real challenge," Maness said. "We knew that we needed to grow space to meet the growing needs, we had an increased number of students but also programs. But also we recognized we needed another kind of space."
A 4-story, 275,000 square foot space to be exact. At its core is an atrium that’s surrounded by classrooms, collaborative study rooms and more than 250 office spaces. Kevin Mitchell, an MBA student with the business school, says the new building and other recent developments on campus – like the McLane stadium and several building renovations – as a sign of the growth to come for the university.
“It’s a lot to take in at once but it’s great. As a student, I’m really in awe and I’m really appreciate of how far we’ve come in such a short amount of time," Mitchell said.
The classrooms feature the latest technologies and allow for video conferences. It’s a new way to teach, Maness says that helps keep instruction current with state of the art technology.
"We'll teach differently, because the classrooms allow for us to do things a little differently in terms of how we involve technology and the like - it facilitates," Maness said.
Ground was first broken on the facility in December 2013