Topping Out
By Terry Tush
The construction of the new Business Building on Oklahoma State University’s Stillwater campus reached several milestones this spring, including the traditional topping-out ceremony, where the last steel beam is raised to the top of the structure.
Dean Ken Eastman and other leaders in the Spears School of Business, officials from Manhattan Construction and its vendors, leaders from the OSU Long Range Facilities Planning department, and employees from Elliott + Associates Architects who designed the building were among those celebrating the topping-out ceremony on May 2.
In addition, the Spears School, in conjunction with the Business Student Council, hosted a beam-signing event earlier in April. OSU students, faculty and staff, Spears School alumni and others signed their names to a pair of orange-painted 14-foot-long beams that were placed in the $75 million, crescent-shaped structure. An estimated 750 people took part in the special event.
The 144,000-square-foot, four-story Business Building is scheduled to be completed in January 2018 and open to students that spring.
“Participating in the beam-signing event gave me the opportunity to get to know my professors and fellow students in a way that I hadn’t before. On that day, we were all one big Spears School of Business family,” says Josh White, an entrepreneurship senior from Oklahoma City. “In 10 years, I’ll be able to return as an alumnus and know that I was a very small part of something huge that will impact lives and inspire excellence for years to come.”
When the new building opens, all Spears School personnel will be housed together for the first time in many years to serve more than 4,600 undergraduate and over 1,000 graduate students. OSU business school faculty, staff and graduate students are currently housed in six different buildings in Stillwater — four on campus and two off campus.
The new Business Building will include 13 classrooms, nine team rooms, eight conference rooms, eight breakout rooms, four labs, 825 classroom chairs and 150-plus offices.
The 45,000-square-foot basement will contain most of the classrooms, including a 150-seat classroom and five 65-seat classrooms. These classrooms will incorporate flexibility and interactivity. Movable furniture will facilitate various configurations, as the tiered classrooms will allow students to easily collaborate on projects and incorporate small-group exercises into class time. This flexibility reflects the curriculum’s hands-on, experiential-learning approach to prepare graduates for success in the modern workplace.
The new Business Building’s neo-Georgian exterior will tie in with the rest of the Stillwater campus.
“The new building will provide enough space to house faculty, students and staff, and more importantly, it will have educational space to better prepare our students for the future,” Dean Eastman says. “We are looking forward to the vibrance and the new opportunities of the new building.”