HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — An open house is set for Sunday on Marshall University’s Huntington campus for the newly constructed Brad D. Smith Center for Business and Innovation.
The 77,000 square-foot facility will open for students studying business on Monday and will be the new home for Marshall’s Lewis College of Business.
Sunday’s open house will be at the Smith Center from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.
The center is named in honor of Marshall University President Brad Smith, a 1986 Marshall graduate and former CEO of private software company Intuit. In 2018, Smith and his wife, Alys, donated $25 million to toward the project.
Smith said he’s proud to give back to his alma mater.
“That money happened because of what they invested in me when I was here as a student, so it’s just a full circle reinvestment,” he said on this past week’s MetroNews “Talkline.”
The center includes a 360-seat auditorium and classroom spaces ranging in size from 32 to 96 seats. Classrooms have wheeled flip-top nesting desks and writable surface panels on walls. There will also be interactive video conferencing available along with computer and finance labs, among other spaces.
Smith said students will be learning in a facility that’s on the cutting edge of technology.
“I am so excited that the university is going to get the chance to demonstrate to our students what a state-of-the-art business school looks like, and ultimately, they’re going to experience things in this school that will help them learn the newest techniques to compete in the 21st century,” he said.
The business school was previously located in Corbly Hall. Smith said he’s looking forward to seeing what students can do in this new center.
“They went around the world and studied what they considered to be the best practices in architecture and took some inspiration from Silicon Valley. I cannot wait to see what comes out of that building in terms of ideas and the students that we graduate,” he said.
The new Smith Center is located at 1425 4th Avenue in Huntington.