San Antonio- The Albert and Margaret Alkek Foundation has awarded a $200,000 grant to St. Mary’s University’s Bill Greehey School of Business to enhance the classrooms with video technology – allowing the students to interact with business leaders across the country and around the world.

Existing meeting rooms in the Albert B. Alkek Business Building will be transformed into a new video conference room and two studios. This will not only enhance the experiential learning experience for International Business Majors, but it will also assist all business students. In an increasingly wired workplace, it is vital for today’s business students to be familiar and comfortable with their future work environment. The video conference room will also be used by faculty to collaborate with colleagues at other institutions and business leaders, outside of San Antonio and the country, to develop new academic programs.

The studios will provide students with appropriate spaces to practice their interview and presentation skills. One studio will mimic a corporate office in which students will conduct mock interviews. Cameras and computers will record the interactions so that the interview can be evaluated by faculty members, fellow students, and even industry executives. Another studio will be set up for short business presentations. Both studios will be electronically linked to the video conferencing room so that small groups can observe the performances in real or recorded time.

The Albert and Margaret Alkek Foundation has given more than $2 million to St. Mary’s University. In 1983, a gift of almost $1 million enabled the University to add 7,000 square feet onto the Alkek Building, bringing the total area to slightly more than 50,000 square feet of classrooms, seminar space, conference rooms, faculty and staff offices and space for centers in entrepreneurship and global business studies. Albert B. Alkek attended St. Mary’s and he’s also a former member of the St. Mary’s Board of Trustees.

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