N
early 18 months after David Breazzano MBA ’80 donated $25 million to expand the Cornell S.C. Johnson College of Business into the heart of Collegetown, alumni, staff and faculty celebrated the grand opening of the Breazzano Family Center for Business Education on Wednesday.
This state-of-the-art, six-story building is located on Dryden Road in Collegetown, with classrooms for up to 450 students, three floors of administrative offices, two high-definition broadcasting studios and 19 breakout rooms.
“Business education is at an inflection point. We’ve consolidated undergraduate and graduate education through the S.C. Johnson College of Business and we’ve embarked on ambitious programs with the new campus in Roosevelt Island,” Breazzano said.
Dean of the Johnson Graduate School of Management Mark Nelson said that these innovative classrooms, breakout rooms and studios within the building fulfill the needs and goals of the school. He added that it will allow people to connect whether they are in Ithaca or at The Bridge building at Cornell Tech, a building dedicated to collaboration between academics, established companies and startups.
“This building contains … flat classrooms that we don’t have in Sage Hall as well as amazing video functionality that links rooms across Breazzano and the Bridge in New York City that could also foster networking and collaboration,” Nelson said.
Nelson said the opening of this building will also enable additional outreach, especially internationally. The building allows students from different campuses around the world to simultaneously network and hold meetings.
“One college, two campuses. With simultaneous translation capabilities that are available, language is no longer a barrier in connecting us to the rest of the world,” President Martha Pollack said.
In terms of bridging the two campuses, Breazzano added the new center “represents Cornell’s major foreway into the redevelopment of Collegetown” and allows Cornell to “efficiently connect the multiple campuses in New York and China and the Americas.”
In his closing remarks, Breazzano added, “All in all, we have a lot of work ahead of us but we’re in a good place and I am just humbled and honored to be a part of the transformation of business education at Cornell.”