Signature Facility, a Central Home

Top leaders couple completion of the new SOM building with the dawn of new
UTD success

By Paula Felps


The School of Management at The University of Texas at Dallas has, over
the past decade, built a reputation as a world-class institution. With the
completion of its new building, the school now has a physical facility on
par with that reputation.

The new building brings a sense of pride and a heightened sense of morale,
says UTD President Dr. Franklyn Jenifer.

And just as important are the implications the building bodes for the
future - not only for the school but also for the university. With the new
building in place, the UTD campus has a signature facility and The School
of Management (SOM) has a central home. That will be the catalyst that
could help drive the university to the top, Dr. Jenifer says.

"A lot of people talk about going to a Tier One status, but everyone knows
that is difficult to do," he says. "This [building] confirms that we not
only have the dreams but the resources as well. Now we're on our way."


One roof, many reasons to celebrate

The school is on its way, too. As SOM Advisory Council Chairman Ron Nash
points out, "The School of Management now occupies a high-profile location
on the U.T. Dallas campus, and our students, faculty and staff are all
housed together for the first time. "

For Mr. Nash, the importance of that coming together cannot be
over-emphasized. SOM "early on established a focus on academic quality and
has been growing rapidly in recent years," he says. "Its profile has been
limited, however, since the school was scattered around more than half a
dozen buildings on campus. Its program was similarly limited by the lack
of readily available conference and meeting facilities."

New accommodations mean "we have the facilities to develop more continuing
education courses and deeper ties into the business community of Dallas,"
he says.  "We have the space to continue to grow. Our expectation is that
the building will be an important step in allowing us to improve our
programs and raise our profile in the area and in the nation." 


A source of positive attention

It's no small point that "the building itself is impressive," as UTD
Executive Vice President and Provost Dr. Hobson Wildenthal points out,
"and will call additional positive attention to the university as a whole.

"The thing about human beings is that their minds and emotions are touched
by the symbolic material aspects of life," he says. "The coincidence of
the school's scholarly ascendancy and [move] into the new facility will
automatically attract more attention; the accomplishments of the scholars
will have a higher pedestal from which to be viewed."

Those accomplishments already have long been viewed in a favorable light
by fellow educators, Dr. Wildenthal says. "The School of Management has,"
he says, "since around the time that Frank Bass joined our faculty [in
1982], had an extremely high reputation."

But he also says that it has been the recruitment of top-notch teachers in
tandem with the school's growth, especially in the past five years, that
"helped us break through this screen of invisibility and let the larger
public become more aware of us."

Even still, Dr. Wildenthal says, "we've been terribly handicapped up until
this point," by the lack of adequate facilities.


The dean's push toward the future

"But now we have an even bigger challenge to work hard," he says, "because
our only limits are ourselves. There are no excuses, nothing to stop us
from reaching our full potential."

It is that potential that has long been the focal point for SOM Dean Hasan
Pirkul, who has worked tirelessly to build the school's reputation while
at the same time striving to improve its physical conditions.

Architect Tuck Henry, who designed the new School of Management facility,
lauded the dean for squeezing usable space into every inch of the
building.

"I pushed everyone hard," the dean acknowledges. "The builders, the
architect.... I wanted to make sure that it was built for the future....
[This building] is not the end for us, but it does give us a chance to
catch our breath."

More than that, "the enthusiasm that we gain by occupying such a great
facility will carry over into every other phase of our educational
mission," Ron Nash says.

The building fulfills a promise that helped The School of Management
secure its reputation, Dean Pirkul says. "We would not have been able to
bring in or keep the faculty that we have without the promise of a
world-class facility. The people who have come on board came because of
the faculty that was already here but also because they knew this building
would be here. The biggest problem that we've had up until now is that we
couldn't put our faculty in one state-of-the-art building. Now that we are
able to do that, we'll enhance the quality of our education and increase
confidence in what we can do."


A new sense of community

Although he is excited by the prospect of the building's high-tech bells
and whistles and relieved to have the faculty under one artfully designed
roof, Dean Pirkul says he is happiest for the students.

The physical design of the building automatically creates a sense of
community, something that has been difficult to attain until now, says
Robert L. Lovitt, UTD's senior vice president for business affairs.

"Now, students will walk in and see the same faces every day," he says. 

"And it's  important for the faculty to see each other on a daily basis,
to be able to share ideas and research. This is going to help move the
school forward."

"People will now recognize us, not only for what we do academically, but
as a community for education," the senior vice president for business
affairs says.