Page 14 - spaces4learning, Spring 2021

spaces4learning HIGHER EDUCATION
NOT JUST
BUSINESS
AS USUAL
Bowling Green State University Debuts New Business School
By Matt Jones
ON THE CAMPUS of Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio, the Robert W. and Patricia A. Maurer Center is open for business—literally.
The Maurer Center serves as the new home of the Allen W. and Carol M. Schmidthorst College of Business. The building’s dedication took place in Sept. 2020 after two years of construc- tion. And now, the gleaming three-story structure—built to ad- join the century-old campus landmark Hanna Hall—welcomes business students, faculty, and staff daily into a learning envi- ronment that deliberately evokes the feel of a modern workplace.
Students entering the building find themselves in a vast atri- um filled with natural light, collaboration spaces, common ar- eas with soft seating, a café, and student service areas. Five LED ticker tapes embedded into the limestone elevator shaft display stocks, currencies, commodities, a breaking news feed, and the dean of the business school’s Twitter feed. The atrium is bor- dered on all three stories by glass-walled classrooms and other workspaces bustling with activity. The new business school feels distinctly less like a stuffy academic building and more like... well, a business environment.
“One of the goals was for it to resemble a modern, corporate office building so that students would be learning in a place like where they were going to work,” said Raymond Braun, Dean of the Schmidthorst College of Business. “So you live in downtown Dal- las, and you walk in and see offices with lots of atriums and natural light and small offices, the collaboration spaces everywhere, that’s the feel the building has. So that’s where we go to work. And we wanted our building to resemble their future workplace.”
That office-environment feel goes for the faculty, too. Their offices aren’t organized by department anymore, cloistered away from each other; instead, they’re spread throughout the build- ing, encouraging faculty to stream throughout the building and increase the potential for what Dean Braun calls “constructive collusions.” He calls it the opportunity for faculty and students to be in contact with each other and better get to know each other.
Early in the design process, there was some faculty push- back against scattering themselves apart from their immediate colleagues. “In fact, one faculty member said, ‘We don’t need collaboration. Why would I talk to him? I don’t even know
him!’ Exactly. Exactly,” said Joe Connell, Design Principal with Perkins&Will, the design architects behind the Maurer Center. “The reason is collaboration, because you don’t know him.”
The university provost, Dean Braun, Connell, and other Per- kins&Will designers were on the same page from the beginning that the new College of Business look and feel like a modern workplace—that the etiquette, the collaboration, the aura be infused into the DNA of the building.
Modern Facilities for a Modern Pedagogy
The school’s previous building, formerly the Business Admin- istration Building and now known as Central Hall, was built in 1972. Traditional classrooms populated the first floor and
14 SPRING 2021 | spaces4learning.com