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The academic center will support Wharton’s highly successful
curriculum, which features significant interactive and
discussion-based learning, including team work on a variety
of class projects, cases, simulations, leadership and interpersonal
exercises, and field application projects. A functional,
flexible mix of classrooms, group study rooms, offices, computer
labs, student activity spaces and common spaces will
further enhance the community environment.
The building will also accommodate multimedia and the
infrastructure for highly-interactive distance learning, audio
and video conferences, video production and editing and
experimental educational technologies.
Specific applications will include using the most up-to-date
technology for conducting research and offering
computer simulations for Wharton’s negotiating courses and
other parts of the curriculum.
Wharton is already established as a leader in technology,
but “as teaching and learning become even more technology-dependent,
greater classroom computing capabilities,
computing labs and computer-networked team meeting
spaces have become urgent needs,” notes Gerard McCartney,
chief information officer for Wharton Computing and Information
Technology.
While all the major business schools provide access to
technology for their faculty, “what makes Wharton unique
is the way the new building will provide access to technolo-gy
for its students through a series of 57 group study rooms,”
adds McCartney. “These have been designed to provide a full
complement of technology, including capabilities for audio
and video conferencing, video production and editing, connectivity
between group work stations and Internet access.
They will be like mini-labs where students can do their
research, work on group projects and create presentations 24
hours a day.
“Being able to videotape their presentations will be of
enormous benefit to students,” McCartney adds, “because
they can work on a presentation, rehearse it, record it and
review the recording before they step into the classroom.”
To design the state-of-the-art business school building,
Wharton selected the architectural firm of Kohn Pedersen
Fox Associates PC, New York. The firm’s experience with educational
facilities includes the design of a new building at
Oxford University and the University of Chicago Business
School master plan as well as a faculty building at Stanford
University Graduate School of Business. Other designs
include the World Bank Headquarters in Washington, D.C.,
Capital Cities/ABC offices and studios in New York, IBM’s
World Headquarters in Armonk, N.Y., and Goldman Sachs’
European headquarters in London.
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