Kelley School of Business receives $33 million grant from Lilly Endowment

Lilly Endowment Inc. has presented IU with a $33 million grant to expand the Kelley School of Business and renovate the existing facilities, President Michael McRobbie announced Wednesday.

This is the largest grant the Kelley School of Business has received in its 92-year history and one of the largest ever received by IU. The grant from the Lilly Endowment, along with nearly $27 million in private donations from alumni and strategic partners, will allow expansion construction to begin shortly after graduation in May 2012.

The building will be named after IU alumnus James Hodge for his $15 million donation to the project.

“The project will be paid for without a single dollar from tax dollars or student money,” McRobbie said.

The new area of the existing building will feature 20 new classrooms and study areas designed to facilitate technology-based learning and collaboration among students and faculty.

These new spaces will contribute 71,000 additional square feet to the pre-existing 140,000-square-feet, 46-year-old structure.

The additions will wrap around the current building, jutting out about 40 feet toward 10th Street, with a new entrance area at the corner of 10th Street and Fee Lane.  
Upon the addition’s completion, classes will move to the new facility, and renovation will begin one floor at a time on the current structure, McRobbie said.

Planning for the project began in 2005, and both the expansion and renovation are expected to reach completion within three years.

Kelley Dean Dan Smith gave the opening remarks at the press conference to a crowd of students, faculty and the renovation team, commenting about the importance of education and philanthropy.

He also spoke about IU’s appreciation for the Lilly Endowment, saying the University cannot find anywhere else where “generosity is more visible than in our partners at the Lilly
Endowment.”
Sara Cobb, Lilly Endowment vice president for education, also spoke at the conference.
“We are pleased that the new facilities funded by this grant will help secure the Kelley School’s standing as one of the nation’s leading schools of business,” Cobb said.
Since 2000, the Lilly Endowment has donated $775 million to IU, including gifts to the Maurer School of Law, the Jacobs School of Music and the IU libraries.
Gifts have also been donated to many educational areas, including student scholarships, information technology, philanthropy and economic development, McRobbie said.
Smith said the expansion and renovation is not about bricks and mortar.
The building is an enabler for future student learning and economic development across the state, she said.
Smith said the goal is to create a “highly engaged and technology mediated learning environment.

But the brick-and-mortar aspect of the project will give Kelley the space to accept 400-500 more students once the renovation and expansion is complete. 

The 20 additional classrooms will feature collaboration areas in the back of the room for after-hours study and planning time.It will provide state-of-the-art technology for Kelley students, including real-time video chat capabilities with guests from across the state, country and world.

In addition to the extra classrooms, the expanded area of the building will feature a room overlooking the Arboretum for teleconferences and rooms designated specifically for out-of-class work time. These collaboration rooms will have 40 high-tech conference tables.

The Indiana Business Research Center, which is currently housed above the Chase Bank in the square downtown, will be relocated to the new space as well.

“We expect this building to be used and used heavily,” Smith said. “We want to see this building used almost 24/7.”

Student representatives from leadership organizations and committees within Kelley were invited to attend the highly anticipated press conference.

Sophomore Julia Lamorelle, a direct-admit marketing and international business major at Kelley, attended the conference as a representative from the school’s volunteer organization Civic Leadership Development.

Lamorelle said she loves Kelley and already views it like a home where she feels comfortable studying and collaborating with
classmates.

“I definitely think being able to come here 24/7 will make it a lot easier to collaborate with students internationally. It seems like it will be like a second library,” she said.