Tour walks past Marycrest Hall at the University of Dayton.
A $15M Gift Fuels University Of Dayton’s Plans For A New Business School Building
Imagine your business school not just a place to take classes, but a place to actually partake in business. Picture students pitching a startup in one room, while running a consulting project in another. Wouldn’t it be amazing if there were students managing a student-run coffee shop down the hall or working with engineers on the next big idea?
Real experiences, all under one roof.
This is the kind of environment that the University of Dayton’s School of Business Administration (SBA) leaders are looking to create with their recent $15 million gift. This donation will help pave the way for their brand-new academic building that will serve students for years to come.
The planned facility will give students a much larger space to learn, collaborate, and gain the kind of hands-on experience that can’t always happen in a traditional classroom. The anonymous gift is the largest contribution to the project so far and caps the “silent” phase of the SBA’s building campaign, moving the project into its public fundraising phase.
What’s in the plans is a four-story, 153,000-square-foot facility, which has twice as much space for experiential learning, classrooms and collaboration areas – plus three times the current amount of open study space. That means more room to work on projects, meet with teams, practice professional skills, and turn classroom concepts into something more tangible.
“This gift is a profound investment in the future of the University of Dayton and in the students we educate,” University President Eric F. Spina said. “We are deeply grateful to this thoughtful and generous donor, whose vision reflects the very best of the UD community. Their support will leave a lasting, visible impact on generations of students, faculty, alumni and partners.”
BRINGING THE REAL WORLD TO THE CLASSROOM
The new building is supporting the greater mission that Dayton has for its business students. Back in June the school announced that beginning with Fall 2026 incoming students, 100% of business majors will be required to complete at least one paid internship or co-op before graduation. The school shared that 93% of its business students are already completing paid internships or co-ops, with students gaining experience across 17 states and three countries during Summer 2026.
The building will also bring some of Dayton’s most distinctive business programs under one roof. It will house the Davis Center for Portfolio Management, Flyer Enterprises, and Flyer Consulting corporate headquarters, along with a professional selling laboratory and student services offices.
“This is a defining moment for the School of Business Administration,” Dean Trevor Collier says. “With this new facility, we will dramatically expand our capacity to contribute to the University’s experiential learning guarantee, create new opportunities for professional development and deepen our partnerships with the business community, delivering a student experience that is second to none.”
PLANNING FOR WHAT COMES NEXT
The new building is located next to Kettering Labs, which should create more opportunities for collaboration between the SBA and the School of Engineering. That could open doors for students working at the intersection of business and technology – from sales and entrepreneurship to venture creation, AI, and analytics.
While this project is currently on the road to success, there’s still one big milestone ahead for the business school. They need to raise the final $5 million before construction begins, with groundbreaking potentially coming as early as spring 2027. The university says the $15 million gift follows contributions from 10 additional donors who gave between $1 million and $10 million each, along with dozens of other supporters.
Darlene Weaver, provost and executive vice president of academic affairs, says, “These gifts and others that follow will help shape a learning environment that matches the ambition and promise of our students.”
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