It will be our home; let's make it our castle

If a rich uncle decided to give you a fixed amount of money to construct a new home on the condition that it be your primary residence for the next 50 years, would you make it bigger or better? If it was a job that one might expect to take six months under ideal conditions, would you rush the contractor to finish in three months?

Ken Snyder

As we begin work on the programing for this new business building, I think it’s important to talk a little philosophy. We are not interested in rushing the job. We are not interested in maximizing the size of the building while sacrificing quality. We are not interested in a building that looks like the latest fad in building design but looks out of date 10 years from now. I want to be able to come back to this building 30 years from now and show it to my grandkids, and seeing a building that still looks great. We want a business school that will not only be serving the needs of our students today but their children tomorrow.

That means we won’t be pushing to shave a couple months off the schedule to win short-term brownie points. What good will a few months buy us if it means that we will be stuck for years with mistakes created during a rush job?

We will, however, be smart and responsible; building in the quality up front that will bring excellence to this project. It might mean that we invest more money in things like classroom technology and less in total square footage. Our purpose will remained fixed as we make sure this building helps us be a career accelerator for our students.

I believe we have some impressive, bright, creative people who can help us create a facility that will continue to serve our students long after we are gone. We intend to tap that expertise in this undertaking. That’s why we are drafting people from many areas to help us plan this facility. While we don’t have a rich uncle testing us out, we have friends, alumni and members of the USU community who are expecting great things from us. Without them, this would not be possible. There are students not yet born that will reap rewards from careful decisions made now. Could there be a better time to be a part of the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business?

Ken Snyder