Cal State Channel Islands Dedicating New Business School Building

Cal State University Channel Islands will dedicate the first named building in the business school on April 3. Students will begin using the Martin V. Smith Center for Integrated Decision Making in the fall. The center is located in a new building that seats 60 students with work stations and laptops for each student. A scrolling ticker will display streaming stock quotes and custom messages. The center is a good way for students to interact with each other and the instructors, said William Cordeiro, director of Martin V. Smith School of Business and Economics. “Since it has the electronic capabilities we can go out and pull data and integrate them more into what is going on in the marketplace,” Cordeiro said. The school will also make the center open to community events. Smith was a Ventura County developer who made a contribution for the university years before the school opened. A family foundation run by Smith’s four daughters made an additional contribution used to build the center. The Smith family has long supported higher education and its goal is to make the business program at Cal State Channel Islands the best in the system, said Toni Gardiner, one of Smith’s daughters. “Martin V. Smith lived to build buildings, but his greatest satisfaction was the investment he made in people,” Gardiner said. The center was designed in a Spanish Mission style to fit in with the other buildings on campus, which is located on the site of the former Camarillo State Hospital. The location on campus was chosen so that the center can be expanded in the future, Cordeiro said.