The Observer, November 17, 2006
Volume XXXIX, Issue 11
Mandel Center offers "home" for program
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The Mandel Center for Nonprofit Organizations recently began construction on a new $11 million center on Bellflower Road to expand the school.
Completion of the building will mark a milestone in the promotion of other schools similar to the Mandel Center. The Mandel School will become the first program of its kind with its own freestanding building.
The Mandel School was one of the first programs in the nation to focus on educating management leaders for nonprofit organizations.
The $11 million, donated by the Mandel Family Foundation, will be used to construct a two-story building designed by Kallmann, McKinnell & Wood Architects, Inc.
Case's Office of Campus Planning, the donors, and the Mandel Center worked alongside the architects to ensure a design appropriate to the needs of the school. The Albert M. Higley Company, a construction management team, and WF group, a minority business enterprise, also contributed to the planning and are now involved in the construction.
The aesthetics of the building were inspired by donor Mort Mandel, who desired the school to become a place of "quiet elegance" to add to the overall feel of the campus.
"The new building represents a tremendous step forward for the Mandel Center," said Susan Lajoie Eagan, Ph.D., executive director of the Mandel Center. "It also is representative of the stature the Mandel Center has as a leading national program. We are deeply grateful to the Mandel family for its generosity and sustained commitment to the Center."
The new building will offer more opportunities to scholars as well as more space for programs currently off-campus, such as the Master of Nonprofit Organizations (MNO) and Certificate in Nonprofit Management (CNM), which are in rented spaces in the Cleveland Hearing and Speech Center on Euclid Avenue.
"Right now all Mandel Center students have to take classes in different buildings because we don't have a centralized place to call our own home," said Robyn Sandys, Director of Development and Marketing at the Mandel Center.
The Mandel Center will finally be able to house all of its programs within one building, which will aid in its goals of increasing opportunities for graduate and professional education locally, nationally, and internationally through virtual classrooms and distance learning classes.
"The new building makes a statement that Case Western Reserve University is making a real commitment to providing the best facility as a working tool for the Mandel Center's purpose and cause," said donor Morton Mandel.
The floor plan of the building consists of several meeting rooms, classrooms, a large lecture hall, a student lounge, and a kitchen. The second floor will include faculty and staff offices, lounges, and meeting rooms.
The older Mandel Center will "be eventually torn down, we understand, because University Hospitals is going to use this land for new buildings," said Sandys. University Hospital's intentions, however, have not been confirmed.
The original idea for the Mandel School came in 1984 when the Case Board of Trustees established the program.
"Twenty years ago, the intense commitment to improve the leadership skills of nonprofit leaders was not there," said Mandel of the vision behind the school. "We felt there was a vacuum in nonprofit management education. Running a nonprofit is different from running IBM."
The school collaborates with students of other graduate programs at Case, including the School of Law, the School of Management, as well as undergraduates in the College of Arts and Sciences.
