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Alumnus Willie E. Lanier, Sr. marks occasion with launch of Lectureship in Business Ethics
The long-awaited, $72-million Morgan Business Center, home of the Earl G. Graves School of Business and Management, officially opened today. President David Wilson, along with members of the Morgan State University Board of Regents, local and state leaders, students and the business community cut the ribbon to declare the facility open for the business of educating students about today’s global marketplace.
“This business building is the latest jewel on Morgan’s campus,” said MSU President David Wilson. “It is going to provide our faculty with the tools they need to teach at a higher level and our students with unique opportunities to be innovators on the global stage and to learn in a world class environment that is second to none.”
The $72-million state-of-the-art facility features a Center for Innovation, computer labs, classrooms, a real-time Capital Markets stock trading center, seminar rooms, and a 299-person-capacity auditorium that includes an 80-person lecture hall. The building also houses a demonstration kitchen and a block of 10 functional hotel rooms for the business school’s hospitality management program.
Nine undergraduate majors are currently housed within the school of business (Accounting, Business Administration, Entrepreneurship, Finance, Hospitality Management, Information Science & Systems, Management, Marketing, and Supply Chain & Services); there are four master’s-level programs (MBA, Accounting, Hospitality Management, and Project Management); and courses for the doctorate in Business Administration.
The Earl G. Graves School of Business and Management is fully accredited by The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) International. Less than five percent of business programs around the world have received the coveted AACSB accreditation.
“We appreciate the university’s commitment to the school of business and we are very excited about our new home,” said Dr. Fikru Boghossian, dean of the Earl G. Graves School of Business and Management. “Our students deserve the best that we can give them and this new building is going to provide that and more. It not only serves as an attractive focal point for the campus, but it also serves as a great tool to support our outreach efforts to attract the top students and the most talented faculty.”
Located on a nine-acre site at the east end of the Northwood Shopping Center, the nearly 140,000-square-foot complex is the University’s first expansion across Hillen Road and one of several planned projects for the West Campus. Construction of a 660-foot pedestrian bridge across Hillen Road, which will connect the business school to the main campus, will be completed soon. Plans also call for the eventual addition of a parking garage.
Following the conclusion of the ribbon-cutting ceremony and tour of the new building, NFL Hall of Famer and successful businessman Willie E. Lanier, Sr., presented the inaugural lecture for the Graves School of Business and Management’s Willie E. Lanier, Sr. Endowed Lectureship in Business Ethics. Lanier spoke on the topic “Ethics in the Historically Black College: Then and Now” in the business school’s auditorium. In May 2015, he made a $500,000 gift to the University to establish the endowed lectureship.
“Committing to this lectureship,” said Lanier, “allows me to build upon the things I learned as a student in the business school and make a positive contribution to an area that touches all aspects of what we do in life – ethics.”
Lanier earned a degree in business administration from Morgan in 1967 after an outstanding collegiate football career playing for legendary coach Earl Banks. He went on to become one of the National Football League’s “100 Greatest Football Players,” inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1986 and in the College Football Hall of Fame in 2000. He currently serves as a senior advisor with Cary Street Partners and manages his successful Virginia-based investment firm, Lanier Group LLC. Lanier also serves as chairman of the Morgan State University Foundation, Inc.’s Board of Directors.
Morgan State University, founded in 1867, is a Carnegie classified doctoral research institution offering more than 60 academic programs leading to bachelor’s degrees as well as programs at the master’s and doctoral levels. As Maryland’s public urban university, Morgan serves a multi-ethnic and multi-racial student body and seeks to ensure that the doors of higher education are opened as wide as possible to as many as possible. For more information on Morgan State University, visit www.morgan.edu.
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