The William E. Simon Center for Economics and Business opened earlier this month after a two-year renovation project. The building was previously known as Kunkel Hall, the former home of the biology department.
The renovation project, first proposed before the COVID-19 pandemic, sought to bring Lafayette College’s economics department to a single location, according to David Stifel, the chair of the economics department. Stifel said that around 20 percent of students at the college are economics majors and that the old Simon Center, now referred to as Jenks Hall, lacked the modern technology to accommodate its students.
“It’s nice to be able to have everything here in conditions that are comfortable for learning,” Stifel said.
Construction on the building began in 2022. Now, the refreshed space features eight classrooms, 26 offices, a data lab and a Bloomberg terminal, a software that provides real-time financial data.
Audra Kahr, the college’s vice president for finance and administration, led the planning team for the project. Aegis Property Group was brought on by the college to manage the renovation; the company has worked on several other recent capital projects at the college, including the new McCartney II complex.
“It was a pleasure to work closely with the faculty and the department heads to ensure the building met their needs for delivering a world-class education to our students,” Kahr wrote in an email.
“They listened to what we wanted from this space, making this place much brighter than Kunkel used to be,” Stifel said of his communication with Aegis Property Group. Among the main suggestions for renovating the space included building a new set of stairs, adding a ramp from the Hugel Science Center to improve accessibility and adding more windows in classrooms.
A new data lab on the first floor will help facilitate econometrics classes — courses focused on statistical modeling and various business tests — and the Bloomberg terminal will “enable our students to have access to real-time data that is really right at their fingertips,” Stifel said.
A new lecture hall on the second floor will accommodate larger classes such as ECON 101, succeeding the previous lecture hall in the basement of Jenks Hall.
“It’s much more comfortable … the seats don’t fall off,” Stifel said of the lecture hall. “It’s just a much more functional space for us. It’s not as cavernous, and the sight lines and the acoustics are much better.”
The first floor of the building houses the policy studies department. Mark Crain, the chair of the department, said he believes that the new location will bring more visibility to policy studies as a major.
“Very few people enter Lafayette knowing about the major and having this highly visible location is a tremendous boost for us,” he said. “We’ve got very nice signage and our offices are located here, so we’re able to speak to visitors and they can see our displays and some of the things we’re doing in the building.”
Crain also touted the interdisciplinary courses taught in the Simon Center: among the departments represented in the building are English and Mathematics.
The building will see an official ribbon cutting on Oct. 4. — during Homecoming Weekend — in Room 300, a classroom dedicated to retired economics professor Rose Marie Bukics.
“It’s very uplifting to have such a space for learning,” Crain said of the building. “It’s a terrific environment.”
