The Campaign for Sustained Leadership

Wharton's history and spirit of relentless innovation and invention have been the driving force in creating the need for Huntsman Hall. In achieving the unsurpassed international reputation we currently enjoy, we have instituted revolutionary changes in business education. But at the same time, our current buildings, dating back to the early 1950s and 1970s, haven't kept pace with these programmatic transformations. Ask any current or recent students or professors. They will describe the very real need for space at the School, the kind of space that supports and invigorates a 21st century community of learners.

• We've grown our faculty, adding unparalleled depth across disciplines. But office space is so scarce that many professors cannot meet with students for office hours or the informal conversations that so deeply enrich the educational process outside the classroom.

• We have also created new learning models that have forever changed the face of business education. With a stronger emphasis and strengthening of the core curricula at both the MBA and undergraduate levels, students move through their coursework in larger groups — sometimes 75 to 80 students per class, a capacity that few of our classrooms can accommodate. And team-meeting space, essential to the team-learning curricular approach that has won Wharton's programs high praise by recruiters around the world, is nearly absent in our existing facilities. Without it, students work wherever they can, often in their dorms or off-campus housing without vital technology connections. Many students simply resort to holding project sessions in hallways, where they must sit on the floor — blocking traffic and dealing with constant interruptions that impede productive work.

• A central ingredient in our commitment to continued curricular innovation is the integration of new learning technologies throughout the School. Through the Alfred West, Jr. Learning Lab professors are creating new technology tools for use in their courses. Market simulators that allow instructors to manipulate variables, for example, turn the classroom into a trading floor for hands-on learning. Technology has completely transformed our approach to learning, but our current classrooms are inadequate to take full advantage of these advances.

Our success to this point has been in our ability to manage our resources as creatively as possible. An analysis that compared our facilities to other top-tier business schools revealed that we lagged behind our peers, many of whom had invested in new facilities. In fact, we discovered that we had less academic space per student than the average U.S. public high school! We've been able to do more with less, but we still struggle to match the quality of our programs to an environment that will spur further growth and innovation.

As the recognized global leader in business education, we need a home base that reflects our excellence and promotes our aspirations. As the single largest addition of academic space on Penn's campus since World War II, Huntsman Hall will provide the facilities that will walk in step with our vision.

Undergraduate students will be able to walk in from Locust Street into the Dr. Martin E. Zweig, W'64, Lobby, with convenient access to student organization offices, and to undergraduate classrooms and group study rooms. The nearby undergraduate cafe and the George B. Harvey, W'54, Undergraduate Study Lounge will provide much needed space for social interaction and quiet study.

The Walnut Street entrance will welcome MBA students, visitors, alumni, and executives arriving from off-campus. MBA classrooms, study lounges, and academic support services, housed on the second and third floors of Huntsman Hall, are accessible by stairs and a series of escalators in the welcoming Jay H. Baker, W'56, Forum.