By Carolyn Gray Anderson
UCLA Anderson is on a growth trajectory — in excellence, reputation and numbers. Yet Anderson is one of only three leading U.S. business schools without a recent expansion to keep pace with enhanced programs, top faculty and students. As we prepare students for meaningful global careers amid growing competition, a new building to update and transform the Anderson educational experience is the highest fundraising priority of our $300 million Into the Next campaign.
The goal? Quite simply, to enable Anderson students and faculty to learn, work and think “in the next.”
In October, UCLA Anderson broke ground on a beautiful, modern structure that will be named for a member of our namesake family and one of the school’s most generous benefactors, the late Marion Anderson. The 64,000-square-foot building will occupy the space just east of our 1995 complex, creating a new “front door” for the school and an impressive entrance to north campus.
“Marion realized we were capped,” Dean Judy Olian said of the limits of a physical plant designed for far fewer students and dating to a time when business schools granted a single advanced degree. “We were capped in terms of the impact we could have and the opportunities we could provide.”
Marion Anderson, with her husband John E. Anderson (B.S. ’40), donated generously over many years to the school named in their honor — not least, Mrs. Anderson’s transformative $100 million gift in May 2015. That unprecedented gift is funding research and fellowships, with $40 million earmarked for the state-of-the-art building that bears her name.
The new space is greatly needed. When the current facility opened 23 years ago, UCLA Anderson had three degree-granting programs. Now there are eight, including two in-demand, data-focused master’s programs added in the past three years. The school’s academic centers have also multiplied, from three a dozen years ago to the current eight, with a ninth on the way. And it now boasts three career centers instead of one, to serve a student population that is 64 percent larger than it was in 1995.
The new building, with features and design carefully planned to foster community and collaboration, will play a crucial role in keeping UCLA Anderson student-centric, innovative and cutting-edge for years to come. Victoria Lew (FEMBA ’19) said of the new building, “It will allow us to succeed by having the creative space to work together.”
Across the U.S., Anderson’s top peer schools are improving and expanding, too. Haas, Columbia and Kellogg are among the major business schools with new buildings underway, while others, including Sloan, Stern and Ross, have completed major capital campaigns since 2010. Anderson must compete to attract the best and brightest students.
And we will — with a world-class faculty, inspiring students and alumni, a portfolio of smart, market-leading programs, and our innovative new physical spaces, designed for the digital age.
Amenities are geared to hybrid, flexible learning and equipped with infrastructure to support evolving classroom technologies. The building will provide additional classrooms, event spaces and program offices, helping to serve students even better, from admission through recruiting.
For the new project, global architecture, design and planning firm Gensler joins Pei Cobb Freed & Partners leads Henry N. Cobb and Michael W. Bischoff as associate architects, bringing experience designing for colleges and universities as well as many large corporations.
“We think of the expansion as extending UCLA Anderson’s identity as a part of L.A., the creative capital of the world,” Gensler principal David Herjeczki said. In the interiors, he said, the goal is to “soften institutional edges,” with the LEED-certified building going beyond standard sustainability metrics to embrace wellness, comfort and ease.
Donor Sam Tang (’87), founder of independent private equity investment management firm TriGuard Management, said he instinctively chose the loft space for his naming gift. “I thought it would be a great place to think,” he said. “I get paid to think. It’s a space that would have appealed to me as a student.” Tang, who keeps a rendition of French sculptor Rodin’s famous Thinker on his desk, imagines people gravitating to the Tang Family Loft to disconnect from their devices and reconnect with more elevating ideas.
“I am so grateful Marion wanted to help us forge our future,” said Olian, “which she’s doing through this building.”
Marion Anderson Hall is scheduled to open in December 2019.
Learn more about Marion Anderson Hall.
It was entrepreneurial visionary John Anderson who inspired the launch of the UCLA Anderson School of Management in 1995, and now it’s the generosity of his late wife, Marion Anderson, who is taking the school to the next level. Here, Dean Judy Olian and other Anderson luminaries share the impact the Andersons have had on students around the globe, and how the creation of Marion Anderson Hall will provide even more opportunities for the UCLA Anderson community to make an impact on the world. This is thinking in the Next.
Posted by: Jodie Stewart | 06/06/2018 at 09:19 AM