Elon University has opened the new Ernest A. Koury Sr. Business Center on campus, a 60,000-square-foot building that will house the Martha and Spencer Love School of Business. The $10 million facility offers the latest technology and provides students and faculty members with an attractive space for teaching and learning.
The three-story building, named by Burlington, N.C., business leader Maurice Koury in honor of his brother, features computer labs, research spaces, faculty offices, and classrooms and breakout rooms designed to enhance group discussions and activities.
State-of-the-art technology is a major component of the building, which has wireless Internet service throughout. The William Garrard Reed Finance Center simulates a real stock trading room, with plasma screens to deliver cable financial news and an electronic stock crawl that provides the latest data from global financial markets. The room has two video projectors for student and faculty presentations.
The 240-seat LaRose Digital Theatre is fully wired for multimedia and worldwide videoconferencing technology. It includes a three-chip, high definition DLP video projector capable of using the 16 x 9 widescreen video format. An advanced video conferencing system includes three video cameras and 12 microphones that can stream signals through a broadband Internet connection.
All 16 classrooms allow instructors to access technology from the lectern, including the Internet, real-time financial information and cable television. All classrooms have a video projector with stereo sound. Multiple classrooms offer flexible seating configurations to fit different lesson plans and accommodate group work.
The Koury Business Center has 2 traditional computer labs that contain a total of 78 PC workstations, while a third collaborative lab contains seven pods, each with five networked computer workstations that can be switched to route their displays to a large-screen plasma flat panel display. The center also has 17 study rooms, 3 student research rooms, 2 club rooms, a student enterprise academy room and a seminar/board room and dean’s suite.
The LabCorp Suite for Executive Education includes 3 classrooms, 4 study rooms and a specially designed collaborative computer lab for conducting realistic business simulations. The Master of Business Administration program will have dedicated quality classrooms, and MBA students taking evening classes after work will be able to use the center’s small dinner and coffee house area.
Visitors to the Koury Business Center will pass the Wallace L. Chandler Fountain and Plaza, a dramatic three-level oval fountain and brick plaza gracing the building’s front entrance. The James B. and Anne Ellington Powell Foyer is a welcoming lobby large enough for receptions and gatherings. Three spacious atriums, named for 1932 Elon alumnus John Lowry, Elon parents Bill and Pat Inman and in honor of Love School of Business Dean John Burbridge by the school’s advisory board, are located adjacent to faculty offices and provide a welcoming place for students to study and consult with faculty members. Each atrium has a collaborative computer station that allows faculty and students to plug in laptops and connect to a 30-inch computer display.
“We are very excited about our new home in the Koury Business Center,” says John Burbridge, dean of the Martha and Spencer Love School of Business. “The building gives our students the latest technological tools in their business education. Students and faculty will be able to work collaboratively in its classrooms, computer labs and study areas, a key component of an Elon education. In addition to our undergraduate programs, our MBA and Executive Education programs will also benefit from this new facility. We are grateful to Maurice and Ernest Koury and the many other donors whose vision and generosity have made this building a reality.”
Maurice Koury’s gift in 2001 named the new center in honor of his brother, Ernest. The Kourys have been business partners in numerous interests, and they own several industrial and commercial properties in the area. Ernest Koury attended Elon before serving in the U.S. Air Force from 1942 to 1944. He founded a hosiery business, today known as Carolina Hosiery Mills, Inc., in the basement of his parents’ home. He served on the Elon Board of Trustees from 1976 to 1996, when he was elected trustee emeritus. He received the Elon Medallion in 1997 in recognition of his loyal service to Elon.
Maurice Koury graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1948. He served UNC as a trustee from 1981 to 1989 and was the recipient of its Distinguished Alumni Award in 1994. The natatorium at UNC and the auditorium in the Kenan-Flagler School of Business are named in his honor.
The Koury Business Center will anchor a new academic quad that links the center of campus with the Danieley Center residential complex. Construction work will continue during the academic year on three additional buildings of this new quad. A two-story, 24,000-square-foot dining hall will be built adjacent to Chandler Fountain and Plaza. Two new single-bedroom apartment-style buildings will be built on the east side of Koury Business Center. These three-story, 34,000-square-foot residence halls will provide a total of 154 beds. The dining center and residence halls will be completed for the fall 2007 semester.
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