Laurentian University administration opened the doors to its brand new Executive Learning Centre (ELC) on June 27 and gave a sneak peek to those in attendance.
The centre resides on the third floor of the Fraser building and features a state of the art conference room and a number of breakout rooms for smaller group discussions.
The ELC is part of a $63 million construction project at the school and is the final phase of a project that also includes new science labs and classrooms.
“This beautiful space will provide a forum for meaningful discussions, for important gatherings, for executive education, professional workshops, formal meetings and long-distance connections,” said Dominic Giroux, Laurentian president and vice-chancellor.
“The setup is such that you can connect from any part of the world and have access to simultaneous translation from any part of the world.”
Inside the brand new conference room are a pair of large projection screens and a multitude of roof mounted cameras that are synched to microphones on the tables around the room. When a speaker presses his or her microphone, the cameras immediately detect who is speaking and projects them on to the screens.
“Laurentian's Faculty of Management, working in collaboration with the Goodman School of Mines, can and will be a world leader in providing education in mining finance, management and resource development,” said Jonathan Goodman, executive in residence at Laurentian and son of Ned Goodman, chair of Goodman School of Mines.
“This centre will play a central role in the education of the next generation of leaders in business and industry. This allows for better service to remote locations for people working in mines. It costs a lot of money to travel to take a course, if you can take an online course at night you're going to save a lot of money and you're going to have a real educational experience that isn't bound by where you live.”
Laurentian students will be in the Executive Learning Centre as early as this fall and the centre has already been booked by fourth year Mineral Sciences students and will also be used by MBA students.
“The first time I saw this room I thought of the United Nations,” said Stephen Havlovic, dean of the Faculty of Management.
“As we strive to create global leaders, what a better way than to be able to connect globally to our partners that we have in China, Austria, France, Croatia, South America and around the world to help develop global leaders as we work on global problems together.”
