With the toss of a half-dozen shovels' full of dirt in front of more than 400 applauding onlookers, ground was broken for the Goizueta Foundation Center for Research & Doctoral Education, Thursday, March 17, in Jenkins Courtyard of Goizueta Business School.

The addition to the business school, to be completed by fall 2005, will bring much-needed classroom and office space as well as some elbow room for the school's growing graduate programs.

"Dean Tom Robertson and the leadership of the Goizueta Business School have recognized that in order to reach its potential, the school needed to have graduate and doctoral programs as well as additional facilities," said Ben Johnson, chair of the Board of Trustees (BOT), during the 20-minute ceremony that preceded the groundbreaking of the planned 91,000-square-foot facility.

Olga de Goizueta, chair of the Goizueta Foundation, was at the center of the line that drove shovels into a pile of black dirt piled on the courtyard stones to cap the ceremony. The Goizueta Foundation Center will be located across the street that was Fish-burne Drive before it was rerouted last summer. The asphalt soon will disappear and be replaced by a grassy area linking the new center to the Jenkins Courtyard.

Like the current business school building, which opened in 1997, the Goizueta Foundation Center for Research & Doctoral Education will have five levels. The first will have space for the Ph.D. and Executive MBA programs and classrooms. The second will open onto the Jenkins Courtyard and a new indoor/outdoor café. Executive education programs will be on the third floor, and the fourth and fifth floors will provide space for doctoral students as well as laboratory and seminar space.

The $33.4 million structure also will include a larger, more sophisticated broadcast recording studio and space for a simulated trading floor. In addition, more than 40 business school employees whose work spaces are now in Thomas Hall will be able to move back to Goizueta facilities.