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The Knight Management Center

 

Frequently Asked Questions

 

Dan Rudolph, Senior Associate Dean for Operations, fields questions about the new campus for the Stanford Graduate School of Business. The following are answers to some frequently-raised issues.

 

Why does the GSB need a new campus?
First and foremost, to successfully implement the new curriculum and to make the new Stanford collaborations work, we need a campus with very different facilities than we have today. We need large numbers of seminar rooms, team oriented spaces, smaller breakout rooms, and more flexible classrooms than we have in our current campus with its tiered classrooms. The mismatch is rather extreme.

We currently have 29 lecture, seminar and breakout rooms. Plans are to have 77 of these instructional rooms available in our new campus. Today we allot roughly 17 square feet of classroom space per student at the GSB. The new building will give us 25-30 square feet per student in all our instructional spaces.

Comparative instructional space:

 

Current

Knight Management Center*

Auditorium

324 seats

600 seats

Tiered Classrooms

16

10

Flat Classrooms

5

19

Breakout/Study Rooms

8

48

*Future classrooms have 50 percent more square footage per person and utilize movable seating to increase flexibility.

We want our new campus to support a spirit of collaboration and community, creating more spaces for collaborative work by students and faculty and making sure visitors, alumni, and the rest of Stanford feel welcome on our new campus. Stanford University is currently emphasizing cross disciplinary work and the Business School is a key resource in this effort with 30 classes cross listed with other schools and departments. As an example, more than a dozen faculty from other parts of campus have appointments at the GSB but we do not have office space for them at present, handicapping their ability to work closely with GSB professors.

There are several other deficiencies of our current campus that we will be able to erase.

  • Bishop Auditorium has only 324 seats while our current first-year MBA class is 379. Our new curriculum will increase the demand for class space large enough to seat an entire class.
  • Our classrooms are roughly 50 percent smaller per student than new MBA classrooms that are being built by competitors around the country, providing 17 square feet per student as opposed to an industry standard of nearly 30 square feet.
  • Our current facility does not have enough rooms to accommodate our new curriculum. In the fall 2007 some classes will have to meet at Tressider Union and other campus building.
  • Our cafeteria should take advantage of our world-famous climate by opening easily to the outdoors, rather than being located in a basement.
  • The energy efficiency of our current campus is not ideal. We will focus considerable time and attention on the environmental sustainability of our new campus.

We lag far, far behind our peer institutions in the quality of our facilities. We hear this from prospective students and faculty colleagues who are concerned about our classrooms, technology, faculty offices, student facilities, and community gathering places. The GSB South building was opened in 1966 when most classes followed a traditional lecture format and the Littlefield Management Center that houses faculty offices was dedicated in 1988. We will gain 80,000 square feet of space with our new campus. More important than the size, it will be flexible space that will allow us to create smaller classrooms and breakout rooms for the way we teach today and give us the ability to modify them in the future as needed.

Harvard Business School and Wharton both have new buildings that make up a big part of their facilities while Chicago GSB has a new campus and MIT, Columbia, and Kellogg are all working on plans to build new campuses or major additions to their existing facilities. We acknowledge that state-of-the-art buildings are not the most important factor in the School’s success. Instead, we believe that assembling the best people and programs is the key to building the world’s leading school of management. That said, we also believe we need to have competitive facilities that make the academic program work well. That is not the case today.

Why can’t you just renovate the current campus and build on to what you already have?
This was actually the very first thing we considered. We spent a long time evaluating the potential to renovate and add on as we considered our future space needs. Unfortunately, the current GSB campus is hemmed in on all sides—Serra Street to the south, the Oval to the west, Frost Amphitheatre to the northeast and Memorial Auditorium (an historic building) to the east. We looked at trying to use the current footprint but, due to campus height restrictions and the very high cost of renovating the South building, it is not possible to make these renovations cost effectively, if at all.

Why does it cost so much to build?
The cost of the 360,000-square-foot campus is estimated at $350 million. That does seem like a lot of money for what are mostly classroom and office buildings. However, there are many components of the costs and we believe the estimates we have been given by Stanford’s Land and Buildings Department are a good preliminary estimate.

The hard construction costs are estimated to be $350-$400/square foot totaling $119-$136 million.

  • In addition to construction, estimates of some additional costs related to the project are:
  • $34 million for the underground parking garage.
  • $17 million for landscaping and connective elements.
  • $30 million for architect fees, furniture, fixtures etc. as well as start up costs.
  • $16 million in expenses the GSB will pay toward the costs of relocating the University staff who currently occupy the Serra Street buildings that will be demolished to make way for the campus.
  • $16 million in a type of internal tax. All new construction on the Stanford campus must pay the University fees to cover overall campus development costs including complying with our General Use Permit (GUP) agreement with local governments.

The hard costs of $350-$400/square foot are in line with what you might find elsewhere. It is all of the other costs and fees that add up to the larger $350 million figure that is the fundraising goal for the new GSB campus.

What will happen to the current GSB campus buildings?
The current buildings will be assigned to the University Provost, who oversees all land and buildings on campus. There is a rather restrictive limit on how much growth of academic buildings Stanford can have over the next several years. This means each building is being carefully scrutinized as to its current and future use. We expect that the Littlefield and Knight buildings will be occupied by another school or department and have heard that the South building is likely to be mothballed or torn down. That future decision will be made by the Provost.

Will the MBA class size increase?
The current MBA class size of roughly 370 students per class is not expected to change. We do believe executive education will continue its growth trend. By building classrooms with variable seating versus the fixed seating we have today, we will add flexibility to how many people are in each room at a given time and will alleviate many current scheduling obstacles.

Will faculty size increase?
To successfully implement the new curriculum we need to increase the number of GSB faculty, both tenure line and lecturers. We will have more Bass seminars and 2nd year seminars. The new curriculum creates critical analytical thinking (CAT) seminars with faculty advising and a larger number of core sections to provide students with more choices. We continue to increase the number of co-taught classes where we team a tenure line faculty member with a lecturer with great results. The number of active emeriti faculty is also expected to increase as some of our long time favorite faculty start to retire in the next few years. Many of them will remain active in the School and continue to need usable office and research space while we will also need space for new faculty.

Are you making the new campus green?
We want to take a leadership role by building a green campus—incorporating environmentally responsible elements. A group of faculty, staff, alumni, and students worked last summer to help develop a framework and green guidelines for the campus green. This dedicated group did an excellent job and has recommended that we seek certification for our campus from LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) at the highest Platinum level. We have agreed to this recommendation and are seeking funding to help defray the investments required to obtain the Platinum LEED certification. We are very hopeful that this funding will be forthcoming.

What are the biggest shortcomings of the current campus and how will you address these in the new campus?
Perhaps the biggest shortcoming is the lack of adequate classrooms and breakout rooms—especially facilities needed to implement the new curriculum. We will build more classrooms and a greater variety of classrooms to accommodate new teaching styles and increase the number of breakout and seminar rooms nearly six-fold to meet the needs of the new MBA curriculum that will be implemented starting in fall 2007. We are looking for a more collaborative feeling and more collaborative spaces in the new campus and are planning to build places—both large and mostly small—where this can happen. Another important change will be a larger auditorium, since the new curriculum calls for more frequent all-class (community) meetings. At present, Bishop auditorium only holds 324, while we have 379 students in our first-year class. We also plan a cafeteria that will combine indoor and outdoor facilities rather than the current underground space. We want to make sure that the function of the Birds courtyard is replicated in the new campus and have designated what we call the Town Square to serve the same function.

How long have you been working on the new campus concept?
The initial work to assess our future growth and space needs started more than 5 years ago. Because of the long lead times involved in planning, fundraising and construction itself, we wanted to get a good handle on our space needs long before starting to actually build something. Our first project was to assess how we could better utilize our current buildings or possibly add to the current campus. We looked at classroom utilization, which helped us realize that our biggest need was for more and differently configured classrooms and smaller breakout rooms. We then did a classroom design study plus a preliminary campus master plan which was approved by the trustees in June 2006.

How long will it take to build the campus?
We are hoping to obtain design approval from the University trustees this fall and construction approval in June 2008. If we begin construction at that time, we would hope to occupy the campus in the fall of 2010. That is the fastest we are likely to move ahead. It is possible that fundraising or other delays will push back our occupancy date to the fall of 2011. Given the launch of our new curriculum in fall 2007, the sooner we can move to the new campus the better.

Why does it take so long to build?
Construction on the Stanford campus is designed to last a long time and must also fit in well with the rest of the campus. In order to assure that the GSB campus meets these criteria, there are a number of Board of Trustee approvals required. Also, it is a large project with multiple structures, including below ground parking and many outdoor elements and landscaping. Because of this complexity, we expect it to take a couple of years to complete once we have received final approval—something we hope to receive by June 2008.

How long will the new campus last?
We are planning for a minimum of 75 years for the new campus, although it may last longer. The site we have selected has room for expansion on both sides of Serra Street. We are also well aware of the fact that whatever we build will become obsolete sooner than we would like as technology and pedagogy continue to evolve. Accordingly, we are building the campus with this need for flexibility in mind so that when we have to modify the campus in 25, 35, or 50 years, we will be able to do so at a reasonable cost.

What technology are you planning for the new campus?
We are sure that technology will continue to evolve over time, so we want to preserve some flexibility. We are focusing on the classrooms, on the fact that technology is portable in this wireless age, on linking to the outside world including video connectivity, and on the need to continue to conveniently provide everyone with basic services such as printing, access to information and databases etc. We are just starting this process and will have more to report later.

What style of architecture will the new campus have?
We have not designed the buildings yet, so we don’t have a definite answer. They will be designed to blend successfully with the beautiful Stanford campus. We are also clear that we want the integration of indoor and outdoor spaces to be an important element of the campus design, so that we can take advantage of the inviting outdoor climate we enjoy much of the year.

Who is working on the new campus?
BOORA Architects is the Executive Architect for the Knight Management Center. Turner Construction is the general contractor, providing preconstruction services and will build the buildings.

The University provides the Business School with a number of staff to help manage the project, including University Architect David Lenox.

From the GSB staff perspective, Kathleen Kavanaugh is providing full-time oversight and management of the project with assistance from Karen Wilson, Associate Dean for Faculty Services and Operations (Karen has been working on the project from the beginning five years ago). Numerous faculty, students and staff will provide input to the project. The Dean’s office along with selected alumni, faculty, and students will comprise an oversight committee. Finally, the University President and Provost together with the Stanford Board of Trustees will provide oversight and approvals for the University.

What is happening competitively, with our peer schools?
While keeping up with the physical structure of our peer schools is not a primary motivation for our new campus, we are well aware of the investments that have been recently made at other schools. We do not believe we need the very best facilities around to be a leader in management education, but the GSB needs to be competitive. We know that currently our facilities are sorely lacking and lag our key competitors by a wide margin.

  • Harvard Business School has built a new student center (Spangler) and completely renovated Baker Library in the past few years. They are also renovating their classroom buildings and other facilities for faculty and staff offices.
  • Wharton’s new building, Huntsman Hall, was placed into service in 2002. The 324,000-square-foot structure includes 48 classrooms, 57 group study rooms, plus lecture halls, auditoriums and conference rooms and houses over half of the schools’ activities.
  • The University of Chicago’s Hyde Park campus was completed in 2004.
  • MIT and Columbia have both announced plans for new business school buildings or campuses.

The biggest gaps are in the quality of our classrooms, breakout rooms, and collaborative spaces as well as dedicated space and facilities for students on campus.

What other business school campuses do you admire?
We have visited many other business school campuses and, while many have some attractive features, we believe we can do something truly outstanding at the GSB. We are very fortunate to be able to take advantage of outdoor space for much of the year and will use that strength to design a new campus that few others can imitate. We will try to take the best ideas from all of the schools we have seen and create something that is truly great and reflects Stanford.

Won’t the new campus move the GSB away from the quad and the center of campus?
We are moving a little bit away from the center of campus, but will still be inside Campus Drive, on the main route to the athletic facilities and near most graduate student housing. We expect to have plenty of traffic from other schools once our new campus is built. Unfortunately, there was no land available for expansion adjacent to the existing GSB campus, so we needed to move further down Serra Street to find a place where we can fit now and build a facility that will last into the future.

Many have described the Littlefield building as looking like a hotel. How will you avoid building Littlefield again?
We want to better integrate the faculty on the new campus. Current plans are for classrooms below the faculty offices in the same building—similar to the mix in the South building before Littlefield was built. This seemed to promote more interaction between students and faculty. The new campus also will reflect faculty requests for more collaborative work space and conference space.

Are you through with fundraising now that you have Phil Knight’s commitment?
The $105 million commitment we received from Phil Knight was an incredible gift—in fact in was the largest gift in the history of any business school. We will be naming the new campus the Knight Management Center to honor him. The total cost of the new campus is estimated at $350 million, so we need to raise another $170 million. We do have some additional commitments in place and many discussions are underway with prospective donors. We hope to have $350 million of commitments in hand by June 2008 when we expect to begin construction of the new GSB campus.

Is the University paying for the GSB campus?
As you may know, the GSB is a formula school. This means that we keep all of the money we collect each year in tuition and fees, but pay a percentage annually to the Provost in exchange for the use of central Stanford services. In addition, the GSB does its own fundraising and keeps that money. As a formula school, we are responsible to raise the money to build the campus ourselves and will also be responsible for funding its ongoing maintenance costs. The University does pay for general purpose facilities like parking and roadwork that are part of the overall plan for the new GSB campus. Money raised for the new GSB campus will count toward the University’s overall goal of raising $4.3 billion through The Stanford Challenge.

How can I contribute to the new campus?
We are raising capital funds to pay for the new campus right now with our focus on large naming gifts that will be paid off over the next 7-8 years as pledge payments are collected. Those making donations through programs such as annual and reunion giving will be instrumental in building the School’s reserves. These funds will be needed during the next 3.5 years as we spend money before the larger pledges are paid. In this way, many alumni can participate in helping to make the GSB campus a reality.

I don’t have a lot of money, how will my gift help out?
Annual giving accounted for more than $13 million last year. We receive many smaller gifts that aggregate into a large amount of money, because so many of our alumni contribute to the GSB. Last year more than 44 percent of our MBA alumni made gifts that way. This money helps to fund current activities—including the campus—and will also help generate reserves which will be a critical source of funding for the new campus to bridge the gap between capital pledge payments and campus construction expenses over the next 3-to-4 years.

What will be distinctive about the new campus?
If we are successful, there will be many places on the new campus where collaborations will take place easily and naturally. They may include small student seminars, alumni who add their perspective to a class discussion or case study, executive education study groups, events hosting managers or government leaders from around the globe, or faculty finding new ways to address issues that cross traditional academic boundaries.

There will be a wonderful blending of the indoor and outdoor spaces and opportunities for people to move between them. Our architects are looking closely at the ways our constituencies use our existing facilities to help them create highly interactive spaces in our new site. We want to have a variety of spaces—both small and large throughout our indoor and outdoor rooms and circulation areas—that provide inviting spaces to foster serendipitous conversation and debate among students, faculty, and staff. Our public area known as the Town Square, in particular, will be designed to be at the center of our intellectual and social spaces and energize community interaction across the campus. The entrepreneurial spirit that characterizes Stanford, the GSB, and Silicon Valley will be evident to everyone who visits our new campus.

Will there be a library on the new campus?
Yes. What it looks like and what it does is currently being discussed. There has been a long term trend towards using electronic formats for library information and we expect that to continue. We have already begun to modify our current facility to reflect those trends and expect that to continue in the library design for the new campus. In addition to accessing information and providing help accessing information resources, our library is today and will continue to be a place for group study activities and for quiet research and study.

What will happen to the Birds?
The area we call the Town Square of the new campus is expected to function like the Birds courtyard—a place for people to find each other between classes, to have activities and to hang out together. We have not decided yet what will happen to the actual sculpture, The Birds, in the new campus but the University has a process for moving artwork from one location to another. 

Will visitor parking be any easier?
We are planning to build a large underground parking facility to preserve the green space on campus and provide adequate parking for faculty, staff, students, and visitors. Parking is a challenge everywhere on campus, but overall it should be a bit better in our new location.

What are you most excited about on the new campus?
We are most excited about creating spaces that fit our new curriculum and that foster collaboration within the GSB, with the global business world, and between the School and the rest of the Stanford community. We are also very excited about focusing on the environmental sustainability of the new campus.

What will you have more of/less of on the new campus?

  • We will have more classrooms and a greater variety of functionality in those rooms. We will have:
  • More breakout rooms and conference rooms for use by students, faculty and staff.
  • Fewer traditional case discussion rooms that hold 60-70 students and more rooms for larger or substantially smaller groups.
  • Smaller and fewer private offices for staff and more open seating as called for in the new Stanford space guidelines.
  • A new approach to space utilization in the library with more traditional library materials being stored offsite and retrieved on demand.

Where is the Knight Management Center located?
The Knight Management Center will be located on the current site of 651 and 655 Serra Street and its surrounding parking lots. It will occupy the land at the intersection of Serra Street and Campus Drive East, across the street from the Schwab Residential Center.

How big is the Knight Management Center?
The Knight Management Center is 100,000 square feet larger than the existing GSB facilities, totaling 360,000 square feet for the new campus.

When does the Business School expect to take occupancy of the Knight Management Center?
The current plan is to move in during Fiscal Year 2011.