Regents back business school addition

An anonymous $20 million gift, one of the largest single gifts in UW–Madison history, would be the catalyst for construction of a new home for the MBA program of the School of Business in a plan approved Friday by the Board of Regents.

“This visionary gift will provide facilities to tap the full potential of a newly revamped graduate curriculum in the business school,” says Chancellor John D. Wiley. “It will provide a statewide boost for entrepreneurship, enable us to better serve the needs of students and elevate the stature of our graduate business programs nationally.”

Regents also backed a 600-bed residence hall project that is a key part of the redevelopment of the East Campus area.

The projects will go to the Legislature, where approval is needed to put both on a fast track for completion.

School of Business Dean Michael M. Knetter said the addition would be constructed on the east side of Grainger Hall, the business school’s home. If it wins final approval, the new facility would open its doors to students in fall 2007.

Construction would require demolition of a university-owned building at 905 University Ave., which is home to several campus offices.

“This is an exciting and rare opportunity, for which we are most grateful,” Knetter says. “A great business school, with real strength in professional programs, is a critical part of the infrastructure that enables business to thrive.”

The new facility would cost $40 million, with $20 million offered by the donor, in exchange for an additional $10 million in gift funds and $10 million in general-fund supported borrowing.

Knetter says that the 125,000-square-foot addition would separate undergraduate and graduate programs, and would improve program opportunities for students at both levels.

It also could provide a boost to Wisconsin’s business climate, he says. “It is no accident that every regional hot spot in the new economy — from the Silicon Valley to the Research Triangle to Austin — has one or more elite business schools that contribute talent to the business economy.”

To achieve the fall 2007 occupancy, the university is asking the Legislature to pass legislation enumerating the project during its spring 2004 session. This would allow design to commence this summer, with construction beginning in summer 2005.

The gift would come at a key moment for the School of Business, which has just completed an innovative makeover of its MBA program to focus on career specializations.

The new program, which will start in the 2004-05 academic year, allows MBA students to tailor their graduate school experience in one of 14 career specializations, areas such as applied security analysis, supply chain management, product management and applied corporate finance.

Their first year will provide a strong business foundation in a range of areas, but in the second year, students will home in on career specializations.

“Students will know what track they are on from the beginning, and that is unique,” says Knetter, noting that the programs will operate out of specialized academic centers. “We will have a cadre of students, faculty and alumni advisory board members committed to that area, who will develop deeper relationships and a strong sense of community.”

The program differs from “general management” MBA programs that provide a first-year overview followed by a second year of electives with no specialized major. And, it is more targeted than “traditional major” MBA programs that emphasize study of a broad area, such as marketing or accounting, in the second year.

The residence hall project, at the southeast corner of North Park and Dayton streets, will help provide enough student housing to enable the demolition of Ogg Hall. The $34.9 million project will be financed by housing fee revenue, not taxpayer money.

Costs include the demolition of Ogg Hall’s two 13-story towers that now provide about 1,000 beds of student housing, and landscaping for the site, which is expected to include recreational fields.

Demolition of Ogg Hall will help clear the way for an East Campus pedestrian mall that will be the unifying feature of a plan to redevelop that part of the campus.

An additional residence hall, with another 400 beds is being considered at a site about a block south along Park Street. That project is planned for construction by a private developer, and the university would lease the facility with an option to buy.

Preliminary design for the residence hall at Dayton and North Park will also include extending the proposed East Campus pedestrian mall from Johnson Street south to the railroad tracks that run behind the Kohl Center.

Architectural and engineering consultants who inspected Ogg Hall determined that the 39-year-old building has inadequacies that would be prohibitively expensive to correct, including low floor-to-ceiling heights and the lack of a fire sprinkler system, which will be required by state law in university residence halls beginning Jan. 1, 2006.

“This plan is part of our long-term objective of enhancing student housing in a cost-effective way and providing residence halls that meet all safety codes,” says Paul Evans, director of University Housing.

If the project gets all needed approvals, officials expect that the residence hall could be ready for occupancy in the fall of 2006.

The regents also approved:

• Construction of a 1,285-stall parking ramp on the 449-space surface Lot 76 in the western part of campus near the A.C. Nielsen Tennis Stadium. The $18 million cost will come from program revenue.
• Building a new Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory on an existing parking lot adjacent to the School of Veterinary Medicine at a cost of $25.2 million. The facility would replace an outdated 36-year-old lab, and would house new labs for microbiology, pathology-toxicology and virology and a new lab that will deal with chronic wasting disease.