The UC Davis Graduate School of Manage-ment announced June 12 that it is moving its nationally ranked Sacramento Working Professional MBA Program from leased office space near the Tower Bridge in downtown Sacramento to the UC Davis Sacramento campus.

The first classes will be held in the new facility in March 2010.

The Education Building, a three-year-old, $46.2 million, 121,000 square-foot facility, serves as a gateway to the 140-acre UC Davis Sacramento campus. It is the learning hub for the UC Davis School of Medicine and home to the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing, which expects to welcome its first students in fall 2010.

Critical acclaim

The Education Building includes a library, two 150-seat lecture halls, classrooms, small teaching rooms, a lounge, study areas and a café. It also boasts high-speed wireless connectivity, high-quality projection, videoconferencing, and video streaming equipment. California Construction Magazine recognized the facility as the best higher education project in Northern California in 2006.

The Sacramento Working Professional MBA Program, which offers evening and Saturday classes, will have use of classrooms, breakout rooms and meeting space on the building’s second floor.

“It will be wonderful for our working professional MBA students to be on a UC Davis campus where they can collaborate with other students,” said Nicole Woolsey Biggart, dean of the management school. “The Graduate School of Management will be the third professional school at UC Davis Sacramento. It will be exciting for MBA students to learn alongside other highly motivated professionals.”

Claire Pomeroy, vice chancellor for Human Health Sciences at UC Davis and dean of the School of Medicine, said that relocating the Working Professional MBA Program to the Sacramento campus creates a “dynamic learning environment where future leaders in all areas of business, medicine and nursing can expand their skills to make positive, long-term impacts in our community and around the globe.”

Learning dynamics

Darren Virassammy, a Sacramento Working Professional MBA Program student who has toured the Education Building, said he was “blown away” by the new space.

“The classrooms are configured in a way that will increase the learning dynamics,” said Virassammy, a project manager with Trainor Commercial Construction in San Anselmo.

“In our current home, it also is difficult on some nights to meet with your group in private to work on projects. This new facility will make teamwork easier,” he said.

For more information, visit www.gsm.ucdavis.edu.