Fernandez Center

READY to Innovate and Collaborate

Loyola University Maryland celebrated the opening of the Miguel B. Fernandez Family Center for Innovation and Collaborative Learning in fall 2021. The dynamic, state-of-the-art building is designed to help students innovate, learn, collaborate, and propel their careers forward.

The new 35,000-square-foot building, which is adjacent to a completely reimagined and renovated Beatty Hall, doubled the size of Beatty Hall while preserving the architectural beauty of the historic building.

The Fernandez Center serves as the academic heart of the campus community with features, such as:

• Active learning classrooms: Students and faculty can enjoy an interdisciplinary hub, featuring open and transparent spaces that can be reconfigured for different teaching styles, and invite members of the community to collaborate.
• Forbes Idea Lab: This space, supported by Hollis and James Forbes, ’80, chair of the Board of Trustees, is encircled by 360-degrees of whiteboards to encourage brainstorming, as well as large displays for projecting documents, presentations, and more to foster inspiration and dynamic group work.
• Rizzo Career Center: The Career Center’s footprint has expanded to a two-level space with the new Rizzo Career Center Lounge for events and four times the number of rooms for employers to interview Loyola students conveniently in the heart of campus. With the larger space, the Career Center has also doubled the size of its student career ambassador team, enabling an expanded drop-in schedule.
• Academic Loft: Located on the top floor of the Fernandez Center, this collaborative space will be a place for faculty and students to engage in interactive, innovative, and interdisciplinary learning.
• Graduate Commons: In this new-and-improved space, graduate students can enjoy maximum productivity and collaboration with whiteboards, displays to assist in working with peers and classmates, and an area to work, study, meet or relax between classes, research, or clinical work.
• Innovative faculty space: Faculty will have functional, shared workspaces designed to facilitate interdisciplinary work among colleagues. The buildings house new offices for faculty in the psychology, speech-language-hearing sciences, sociology, and education departments with space for collaboration, new conference rooms, and faculty and student research.
• Green and Grey Café: The new dining location is designed specifically for and with students in mind. The café is perfect for a lighter meal or snacks for students and staff studying or working in these new spaces in the Fernandez Center, on the Quad, or around campus. The Green and Grey Café also features a 100% living greenery wall.
• Outdoor spaces: The building is surrounded by inviting spaces for gatherings, including an outside seating area and an outdoor classroom.