Xavier's Hoff Quad underway

Demolition has started to make way for the Hoff Academic Quad on the Xavier University campus.

The Hoff Academic Quad, to be built along Ledgewood Avenue between Dana Avenue and Bellarmine Chapel, will create a new main entrance to campus and will consist of a multi-purpose Learning Commons, a new facility for the Williams College of Business, a new central utility plant and parking and greenspace improvements.

At the heart of the 9.5-acre quad, the Learning Commons will provide Xavier students with a high-tech, highly social educational environment that will include:

• Magis Plaza, the technological hub
• Center for Student Excellence
• Center for Teaching Excellence
• Center for Community Engaged Learning
• Institute for Jesuit Education
• Information Resources Center
• Renovations to Alter Hall and University Library

The new business school will house new classrooms, a trading room, a data-mining laboratory, a studio for taping and reviewing sales presentations and centers for business ethics, entrepreneurship and investment research.

Forbes.com has rated Xavier’s business school as one of the top 25 in the nation, and U.S. News and World Report ranked the school at number 16.

Last Tuesday, students gathered at the Gallagher Student Center to recreate the campus plan out of ice cream and graham crackers.

"The students see the pictures and hear the descriptions, but don’t really get it," says Rabbi Abie Ingber, founding director of Xavier's Office of Interfaith Community Engagement and facilitator of the event. "If they delve into actually building their new campus, they will understand and appreciate it so much more."

Writer: Kevin LeMaster
Source: Xavier University, Office of Interfaith Community Engagement

Photography by Scott Beseler