Marquette $60M Business School on Track to Open Dec. 2022

Milwaukee's Marquette University is on track to complete construction of a new, $60-million business school in a year. According to the institution, the facility is the largest donor-funded one in its history.

The 100,000-square-foot structure is designed to include collaborative classroom, lab and study spaces; an event space; faculty offices; and areas for programmatic centers of excellence. The first floor will provide wrap-around student support with advising, a student success center and a business career center.

The new space will also include a café, where "collisions between our students, our faculty and our stakeholders will happen," according to Tim Hanley, interim dean of the College of Business Administration.

Marquette University Business School

As people walk into the building, they'll enter a "light-filled atrium" that leads to a planned Applied Investment Management Lab, "where we think the action's going to happen," said Hanley. "I think this facility will be a gamechanger for the university across all of our landscape."

The new facility will also house innovation leadership programs, including Excellence in Leadership (E-LEAD) and interdisciplinary Bridge to Business for Engineers. Campus officials noted that Its closeness to the university's College of Engineering "will help foster creative collisions of thought and perspective that fuel an innovative mindset."

The four-story building design is being led by Vice President for Planning and Facilities Management, Lora Strigens, and her team, in partnership with architectural firms BNIM of Kansas City and Milwaukee-based Workshop Architects. Findorff is constructing the building

The building is scheduled to open in December 2022.

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

Featured

  • GeoCam and UCLA: Modernizing Campus Accessibility Mapping

    In early 2025, UCLA partnered with GeoCam to capture and modernize its pedestrian infrastructure data. The goal was ambitious but clear: to produce a high-accuracy, imagery-backed digital map of every sidewalk, pathway, ramp, and ADA-related feature on UCLA’s 419-acre campus.

  • Barbara Vick Western Branch

    Barbara Vick Western Branch

    Established in 1999, the Education Design Showcase is a vehicle for showing off innovative — yet practical — solutions in planning, design, architecture, and construction. The Barbara Vick Western Branch has been recognized with an EDS 2026 Grand Prize award in the category of Renovation.

  • Opportunity by Design Framework

    Opportunity by Design

    Educational improvement efforts often focus on curriculum, instruction, assessment, professional development, and intervention systems while treating the physical school building as background. But school design is not a passive backdrop to learning — it is a structural lever for equity.

  • CU-Lock Haven Receives $1.75M Gift for New Entrepreneurship, Media Center

    Commonwealth University-Lock Haven in Lock Haven, Penn., recently received a $1.75-million donation from entrepreneur and alumnus Nicholas Subich ’17, according to a university news release. The funds will go toward establishing the Nicholas Subich Center for Entrepreneurship and Media, a technology-driven hub for innovation and experiential learning.