Purdue News

Campaign will fund new building, scholarships, professorships If you are standing still, you are falling behind. Competition for students, potential employers for graduates and top faculty is keen among business schools, according to Dennis Weidenaar, dean of the School of Management and Krannert Graduate School of Management. That means a school must stand out from the pack. Plans are in place to raise the profile of the Purdue schools in several ways: "Krannert at the Frontier," a campaign to raise $55 million to expand facilities, fund endowed professorships and scholarships, and upgrade computer technology. A $25 million building project. A long-term goal to substantially increase graduate student enrollment. Weidenaar describes the day-to-day experience of undergraduate and graduate management students as more work than study, with students spending all day and many evenings either in class, a computer lab or working in teams with other students. For that reason, the business school of the future should resemble a high-tech workplace. "We need an open area or central gathering place where students can meet with faculty and students," he says. "We also need numerous break-out rooms where our students and faculty can plug in their laptop computers and work." Other parts of the new building will include faculty offices, a career center, seminar rooms, classrooms and computer labs. The new building also is needed, Weidenaar says, because expanding enrollment has put tremendous pressure on current facilities. Krannert is consistently ranked among the top 25 business schools in the country, but challenges to that position are strong, including competition with peer institutions - half of which are private and have higher tuition and larger endowments. "Private support is the key to help us expand the program to build on our successes rather than slip back into the pack," Weidenaar says. Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; e-mail, purduenews@purdue.edu To the Purdue News and Photos Page