November 30, 2009
New home for Carey Business School
Carey Business School to move into the Legg Mason Tower in Baltimore's Harbor East
The leadership of the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School has set out to redefine the nature and workings of a 21st-century business education in order to address today’s global social, economic, health and environmental challenges. Dean Yash Gupta has said that he wants students to learn to think critically, act ethically, comprehend issues in a global context and understand that business is all about “people.”
To help realize this vision, Gupta said that faculty will need to stress teamwork and community.
The school has a new home to make that possible.
Next summer, the Carey Business School will move into 80,000 square feet of space on four floors of the new Legg Mason Tower at 100 International Drive in Baltimore’s Harbor East. The university recently entered into a lease agreement with H&S Properties, the developer of Harbor East; and Legg Mason, from which it is subletting two of the floors.
The state-of-the-art waterfront Legg Mason building will house classrooms, student space and offices for the dean, the faculty and staff.
The space will be ready in time for the start of the fall 2010 semester, when the school will welcome its inaugural full-time Global MBA class. The two-year full-time program will feature a curriculum designed to be global in perspective and interdisciplinary in orientation and emphasis.
The new location, officials said, will provide the school with a teaching and learning facility appropriate for full-time, executive and part-time business programs. It also offers more than twice the amount of space as its current home,
the glass-sheathed Downtown Center, located at 10 N. Charles St., which the school’s predecessor—the School for Professional Studies in Business and Education—moved into in early 2001.
Gupta said that the school needed room to expand, both from a practical perspective and in order to “build a community.”
“Students, faculty and staff couldn’t all be together at our existing location,” he said. “We also have no true student commons or breakout rooms in 10 N. Charles St., but business in today’s world often involves the creation of teams, and teams have to meet somewhere.”
Gupta said that students will also benefit from being in close proximity to business professionals in a corporate environment. The tenants of the 24-story tower, which opened this fall, include Legg Mason, one of the world’s largest asset management companies; the law firm of Hogan & Hartson; and the investment firm Oppenheimer & Co. Two other letters of intent to lease up to 44,000 square feet of space have been signed and are under review.
“We expect there will be a lot of fruitful interaction with the other tenants. Students can walk a few feet and be at Legg Mason or another company. The ability to interact with those in the business community is very important, and a huge selling feature for us,” he said.
Gupta said he anticipates that the Carey School’s new location will make it easier to attract business professionals as guest lecturers or part-time faculty, and to set up internship opportunities for students.
The move to the Legg Mason building is a major step in the school’s plan to be one of the nation’s premier business schools, drawing upon Johns Hopkins’ strengths in science and research and capitalizing on interdisciplinary collaboration with the university’s other academic divisions.
At the Legg Mason Tower, the Carey Business School will occupy space on the first, second, 12th and 13th floors. The first floor will serve as the entrance to the school. The second will contain classrooms, breakout spaces for students and faculty, group study rooms, a library and offices for student organizations. The 12th and 13th floors will house offices for the dean, faculty and staff. Amenities include a waterfront view, state-of-the-art technology readiness and a bustling location in the heart of the city. The lease also provides the school with access to the building’s cafeteria and parking garage.
The agreement gives the university options to extend the initial lease term of 10 years up to an additional 10 years.
The Carey Business School also offers courses at satellite locations in Washington, D.C., and in Columbia and Rockville, Md. The school will continue to hold classes at these locations after the move to Harbor East.
The school has an enrollment of about 1,740 full- and part-time students and employs 30 full-time faculty, 110 part-time faculty and 80 staff members. Eighty students are expected to arrive in August 2010 for the Global MBA program.
The Legg Mason building will house roughly 160 full-time students, 500 part-time students, 35 faculty and 50 to 60 staff.
“We are really excited about the prospect of building a real community here, and furthering the mission of this school,” Gupta said.
The Carey Business School was launched in January 2007 on the strength of a $50 million gift from trustee emeritus William Polk Carey through his W.P. Carey Foundation. The school is named for his great-great-great-grandfather James Carey of Loudon.