College of Business expands into new floor in DePaul Center

June 28, 2012
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As it heads into its centennial year, the newly named Richard H. Driehaus College of Business will soon have a brand new “front door” on the fifth floor of the DePaul Center.

Formerly occupied by the city of Chicago, the newly acquired floor will give the College of Business 45,000 square-feet of much-needed additional space while providing a welcoming focal point with a lobby featuring stain glass windows of St. Vincent de Paul.

“We were bursting at the seams,” says Dean Ray Whittington. “The new floor will allow us to centralize some of the departments that have been spread out in this building and across the street in the Daley Building.”

Remodeling of the floor was completed in July. On Sept. 19, the college will formally celebrate its renaming for Richard H. Driehaus, an investment pioneer and philanthropist who gave the college $30 million to attract and retain talented faculty members.  This event will mark the college’s transition to a new century of outstanding teaching and scholarship, which will be enhanced through the expansion of its physical space.

Moving to the fifth floor will create greater synergy among several of the college’s centers and institutes including the Coleman Entrepreneurship Center, the Institute for Business and Professional Ethics, the Family Business Council as well as the Real Estate Center and the Real Estate Department.

The college’s simulated financial trading room will be moving from the sixth floor to the fifth floor, allowing it to double the number of seats from 30 to 60, says Ali Fatemi, chair of the Department of Finance. The tiered classroom will feature 30 dual-monitor computer stations with a plan to have feed from Bloomberg L.P., a leading provider of financial data, which will allow students to perform investment analysis, valuations, risk analysis, financial analysis, governance and oversight and other disciplines to better prepare them for the professional world. “We’ll be the envy of every business school in the nation with this trading room,” Fatemi says, noting that no other college trading room can boast of as many Bloomberg computer stations.

The new floor will also have classrooms and a 50-seat conference room. The dean’s office will move to the fifth floor, creating additional space for the Department of Management.   With the flexibility that the new space brings, the college will be well-positioned to address the needs of an expanding faculty as it heads into its next 100 years.