AIB chairman Mr Lochlann Quinn laid the foundation stone for a new undergraduate school of business at University College Dublin (UCD) yesterday. It will be called the Quinn School of Business.
Mr Quinn and his wife, Brenda, donated £4 million (#5.1 million) towards the £19 million project.
The new school, located on the main UCD campus in Belfield, is due to be completed in June 2002 and will house students from the UCD Faculty of Commerce from October 2002.
It is the first university building in the Republic to be designed with a particular focus on e-technology and e-learning.
It will include smaller class sizes, online lectures and a dealing room, and will be equipped with wireless connectivity and more than 2,000 network connection points for students to use their own laptops. Dr Martin Butler, Dean of the Undergraduate School of Business at UCD, said there would be "no escape" from e-technology in the three-storey, 7,500 sq m building.
Mr Quinn, who received a Bachelor of Commerce degree from UCD in 1962, described the undergraduate school as a "significant leap" in preparing students for a fast-paced e-economy.
Other donors include Mr Philip Berber of the US-based CyberCorp, Bank of Ireland, AIB, Irish Life & Permanent, Accenture, Arthur Anderson, and Ernst & Young.
The current undergraduate school at UCD offers places to more than 2,000 students on five business degree courses. It operates alongside its equivalent for graduates, the Smurfit Graduate School of Business.
