Hartford Business Journal

HARTFORDBUSINESS.COM | NOVEMBER 13, 2023 23 FOCUS: Business Schools Holly Raider, dean of Quinnipiac University's School of Business, and Sal Filardi, vice president for facilities and capital planning, pose at the construction site for the new $70 million business school building. HBJ PHOTO | STEVE LASCHEVER Growth Trajectory Quinnipiac's new $70M business school aims to accommodate enrollment, program expansion By Michelle Tuccitto Sullo msullo@hartfordbusiness.com A hulking steel frame of the future 79,000-square- foot School of Business has arisen on the campus at Quinnipiac University. Officials say construction is on track to be finished in 2025. Quinnipiac students pursuing business careers can expect more space, new tech- nology, specially-designed learning areas and expanded course offerings. The new $70 million School of Business building is part of a large- scale, $244 million "South Quad" campus expansion at the southern end of the university's Mount Carmel Campus in Hamden. The overall project also includes a new academic building and residence hall. Sal Filardi, vice president for facilities and capital planning, said the structural steel frame for the new School of Business building is finished, and workers are pouring floor slabs. The roof was being installed as of late October, and workers next plan to begin putting the "skin" on the building. Rain has slowed construc- tion a bit, but workers anticipate making up for some lost time in the months ahead, Filardi said. When the project was first announced, school officials indicated it would open sometime in 2024. "We're on track to be completed for May of 2025," Filardi said. Holly Raider, dean of the School of Business, said Quinnipiac is making the investment in a new building because it needs more room. "As the School of Business has grown over the years, we have needs and ambitions to do things that our current spaces either allow us to do on a limited basis, or we haven't yet been able to do," Raider said. Quinnipiac's current School of Busi- ness is on the north side of campus, and Raider said it outgrew that space long ago. Raider said business education is a core academic offering at Quinnipiac, which was founded in 1929 as the Connecticut College of Commerce. What to expect Plans are for the new building to have a "Business Innovation Hub," an incubator for building and testing new ideas. It will also have a financial tech- nology center that will provide a trading floor environment with Bloomberg terminals and collabora- tive learning spaces. Students will be able to use trading platforms, investment tools and data systems, and get firsthand experience on how securities and commodities are analyzed, valued and exchanged. Students will access real-time data and resources one would expect at leading investment banks, fund managers and brokerage firms, Raider said. In Quinnipiac's applied portfolio management course, finance students actively manage a $3.5 million equity portfolio for the univer- sity endowment, she said. The new School of Business will also have what Raider calls a "digital sandbox." Artificial intelligence, virtual reality, big data and analytics are currently changing the way businesses operate, and students need all of these skills. These subjects are best learned in a laboratory customized for viewing and analyzing data and programming, Raider said. "Our digital sandbox creates a learning environment conducive to working firsthand with the dynamic technologies that are redefining how businesses operate through ergonomic workstations that support multiscreen views while also enabling student collaboration," Raider said. The new building will feature a larger sales training center than offered currently. There will be a focus group room offering opportuni- ties to see how groups make deci- sions, such as for marketing research or studying negotiations. The new facility will have flexible event spaces for small and large gatherings, up to 150 people. This will allow Quinnipiac to host career fairs and conferences under one roof. In the past, the business school has had to use other facilities, such as the student center, to host some events. Group work The new facility will also reflect changes in student learning preferences. While traditionally, a professor might lecture to students for the duration of a class, the new building is designed to foster more group interaction, Raider said. "Students have much more of an interest in group-based work and group projects, so the new space has a significant increase in study group rooms," Raider said. According to Filardi, existing classrooms aren't big enough to accommodate having students break into groups and then also have larger class participation. Miles Ellsworth, an accounting major who wants to be a certified public accountant, was among the students who gave school officials feedback during the planning phase on what they would like to see in the new School of Business. Ellsworth and other students

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