The ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Anderson School of Management’s new building drew a large crowd on May 11 and featured appearances from several senior faculty members.
Speakers at the event commended the Anderson School’s accomplishments. At the event was the dean of Anderson School of Management Craig White.
“Anderson built a new building to meet the challenges and requirements of current management education,” White said. “The old building was about 50 years old, and many features of the design of the old building were not conducive to current educational techniques.”
The new building is named the McKinnon Center for Management, or MCM.
Vice President of Student Affairs, Eliseo Torres, attended the ceremony.
“Anderson had a top program, we know that’ll continue into the future with these new facilities,” Torres said.
White continued about the schools need to bring the program into a far more modern learning environment.
“For instance, the classrooms were not designed for group work and flexible arrangement. In addition, the space was not conducive to collaboration and interaction amongst faculty, staff and students,” White said.
White said he is very confident about the program’s future with the new facilities.
“The Anderson School will now have a facility that is competitive with the top business schools in the country. This will be a facility that the students can be proud of and be assured that they have access to quality of tools necessary for an outstanding business education.” White said.
Speakers at the ceremony spoke very highly of the program as-is, and former Interim President and current Provost Chaouki Abdallah said, “UNM is currently in the top 20 percent worldwide for management education, and our goal going forward is to be the go-to business school in the region.”
The McKinnon Center’s construction was funded primarily through donations made by UNM alumni, which totaled up to $5 million, and about seven years of planning went into the project.
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The center was one of many ongoing UNM construction projects, as the ongoing construction at Smith Plaza continues.
The new facilities include video conference rooms, charging stations and whiteboards in the hallways, a behavioral lab, student tech support, marketing lab and group study rooms.
One of the more interesting facilities is the Alumni Center inside McKinnon. This is a unique student advisement center for students and the center also intends to showcase the names and accomplishments of post-McKinnon alumni.
The architecture of the Mckinnon Center is modern and industrial — there are four floors, with the second floor containing a banister that overlooks the first, and all floors above cover the whole building. Every floor is lined with office rooms that have in turn been lined with furniture.
“The McKinnon center for management will provide improvements to research opportunities, classroom teaching and support services,” White said. “The extent to which we improve these aspects of our work will improve our standing across the country and internationally.”
Donald Amble is a freelance news reporter at the Daily Lobo. He can be contacted at news@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @Deambler.
