GSB to build new housing for first-year MBA students

SAM GIRVIN/The Stanford Daily

The Graduate School of Business (GSB) will be constructing a new residence complex to address a persistent demand for housing for first-year MBA students. The new building will be located west of the Schwab Residential Center and across from the Knight Management Center.

According to Raj Chellaraj, the GSB’s associate dean for finance and administration, the Board of Trustees approved the building concept last month and further progress on the design will be made this spring.

The new building will be a 1,400-square-foot, three- to four-story complex and will have multiple buildings arranged around a courtyard, similar to the layout of the Schwab Residential Center. Units will have two bedrooms and two bathrooms with a shared kitchen and will be slightly larger than the 300-square-feet rooms in the Schwab Residential Center.

“There will be 200 more net beds, and the whole concept would be to accommodate more first-year MBA students, single or married without children,” Chellaraj said.

The new complex will also feature smaller dining rooms for students to use for socializing as well as a common kitchen and dining space, he added.

Plans for the residence complex have been in discussion for the past few years but developed more rapidly in the last year, said Bernadette de Rafael, the GSB’s director for facilities and hospitality and project manager for the new complex.

According to de Rafael, the GSB matriculates roughly 400 students each year. Built 17 years ago, Schwab houses a maximum of 220 first-year students and is consistently at full capacity with a waitlist each academic year of 50 to 70 graduate students.

Other locations on campus also house first-year MBA students—last year, about 50 lived in the Munger Graduate Residences and 80 in Escondido Village, figures that have remained constant over the past couple years, Chellaraj said. The remainder of first-year students live off campus.

In addition to accommodating more first-year MBA students, the new residence complex will be built with the goal of integrating GSC’s living and learning environment.

“[All first years] take the same classes, and we want to give more opportunity to the students to collaborate and innovate with their classmates,” de Rafael said

The GSB also plans to integrate residents from Schwab by incorporating more open meeting spaces in the new dormitory.

Additionally, one-fourth of the new complex will be used to host students taking part in the GSB’s Executive Educational Program as well as other programs that are not enrolled full year, added de Rafael.

The GSB is still in the process of finalizing how much the construction plans will cost; however, the GSB is set on breaking ground in late 2014 and completing construction by the summer of 2016. The additional space for student housing will not affect future MBA class sizes.

Contact Catherine Zaw at czaw13 ‘at’ stanford ‘dot’ edu.