In summer 2005, Curtis Hall will be demolished and construction will begin on the Fox School of Business and Management’s latest undertaking. A building will be raised at 13th and Montgomery streets, where Curtis now stands, to accommodate the growing number of business majors entering the University and the increasing number of individuals involved with the School of Tourism and Hospitality.
The project is the culmination of over four years of work. It is estimated to cost anywhere from $67 to $72 million to complete. Part of the funding for the project will come from the state of Pennsylvania.
The building, which has yet to be named, will be designed by famed architect Michael Graves, who will work in conjunction with the Burt Hill Kosar Rittleman firm. Graces was selected by a state selection committee.
Plans call for the building to tower six or seven stories above ground – a contrast to the three stories Curtis currently occupies. As a result of this increased space, many of Fox’s institutes, departments and administrative offices will move from Speakman Hall to the new building.
“A good portion of our undergraduate enrollment management operation will move to the new building and be centrally located on the entry level, the main entrance, so that when you walk in, you will immediately be dealing with students and student operations,” said Fox’s Associate Dean for Information Technology, John DeAngelo.
“The impact will be that you are in a very student-centered, very student-focused facility,” he added.
Like the Tuttleman Learning Center that stands across from the new building’s future location, the expansion to the business school will be technology friendly. It will be equipped for mobile computing and will feature “smart” classrooms. Smart classrooms help students and teachers take advantage of new technology for the betterment of educational practices.
In the lobby areas there will be large projection systems, and at various locations throughout the building there will be computer kiosks for students to access the Internet.
Construction on the building is slated to end in late 2006 or early 2007. The first classes could be held in the new building in 2007.
The Fox School of Business and Management is actively raising its profile with other business schools. The London-based Financial Times recently ranked Fox’s EMBA program No. 14 among schools from the United States and No. 25 among schools from all across the world.
“We are finding, generally, that a new building can be a proxy for quality,” DeAngelo said. “It’s our way of saying to the world that we are not only important and prominant internationally and nationally in terms of our rankings, but our building says something about who we are as well.”
“There is no doubt,” he continued, “just as a university now must have quality dorms, quality eating places, quality gymnasiums and fitness facilities, schools of business need facilities that are really prime.”
Tulin Ozturk can be reached at tozturk@temple.edu.
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