RICHARDSON, Texas (Aug. 7, 2003) – When
classes begin for the 2003-04 academic year at The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) on Aug. 21,
the largest of UTD’s seven schools, the School of Management, finally will have a place to call home
– a 204,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art, $38 million new building.
The facility, located at the southeast corner of Drive
A and University Parkway on the UTD campus and designed by the architectural firm of Omniplan, will
feature, among other things, 29 classrooms, two large computer labs, a 350-seat auditorium, break-out
spaces for undergraduate, graduate and executive education student groups, desktop Internet access
in every classroom, wireless network access throughout, audiovisual and online learning support in
every classroom and conference rooms and office space for all 96 of the school’s faculty members.
Until now, the School of Management faculty, staff
members and students have been using no fewer than seven buildings on the UTD campus. The new facility
will enable all of the school’s operations to be housed under the same roof for the first time.
“This is a significant milestone in the development
of our school,” Dean Hasan Pirkul said. “In addition to being able to accommodate our rapid
growth and offer our students a top-quality education that incorporates the latest technologies,
we are now able to go forward from a central, unified position in establishing our reputation as
a top business education facility.”
Enrollment at UTD’s School of Management, which was
founded in 1975, has increased 80 per cent over the last six years to more than 4,300 students. Last
January, a study published by OR/MS Today, a publication of the Institute for Operations Research
and Management Sciences (INFORMS), ranked the school sixth worldwide in research productivity in
operations management and management information systems over the last six years.
Pirkul said he thought that the new building was a
factor in his ability to recruit the top-notch faculty that garnered the OR/MS Today recognition.
“We would not have been able to bring in or keep
the faculty that we have without the promise of this new world-class facility,” the dean said. “The
people who have come on board came because of the faculty members who were 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.”
Pirkul will host an open house at the new facility
on Sept. 30, and a formal dedication of the building will be scheduled in the near future.
About UTD
The University of Texas at Dallas, located at the convergence of Richardson, Plano and Dallas in the heart
of the complex of major multinational technology corporations known as the Telecom Corridor,
enrolls more than 13,000 students. The school’s freshman class traditionally stands at the forefront
of Texas state universities in terms of average SAT scores. The university offers a broad assortment
of bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degree programs. For additional information about UTD, please
visit the university’s Web site at http://www.utdallas.edu.