When Dennis and Stacey Barsema walked through the doors of the new building bearing their name several weeks ago, writing a $20-million check to NIU didn’t seem like such a bad thing.

“I was floored, to put it mildly,” Dennis Barsema said. “I was really impressed with the quality of what I saw and I hope we’ll find next week that it is a pretty student-friendly building.”

The brand new, state-of-the-art, multi-level facility was fashioned after a traditional school building and opens to students for the first time today.

Located on Garden Road just north of the Engineering Building, Barsema Hall will house all of NIU’s business classes come Spring 2003. For now, students in ACCY 206 and 207, UBUS 223, MGMT 217 and ACCY 288 will attend classes in Wirtz Hall.

In September 2000, Dennis Barsema, once a student in NIU’s College of Business program, decided that a generous donation to the university not only would benefit the students, but him as well.

“It’s been lived up to and then some; our whole expression when we walk in the building is ‘wow,’” Graf said. “It’s also not only beautiful, but very functional.”

Graf said that students walking into the building for the first time will want to develop a feel for it.

“They’ll be impressed with the way it looks,” he said. “The first thing they will want to do is look at the information kiosk to locate their classes. I think that they must have quite a bit of anticipation when they get into the classrooms; [students] are going to be surprised with the degree of technology the faculty will be using.

“It is the state-of-the-art in everything in education at this point. Maybe in a year there will be some new technology, but at this time we fit the peak of perfection,” Graf said.

Highlighting the building’s claim for state-of-the-art technology is the ability for students to tie into a computer network, allowing Internet access at every desk. The College of Business’s previous home, Wirtz Hall, didn’t offer a single connection for student laptop use.

“The classrooms themselves were laid out very well,” Barsema said. “It looked like they all had a good view of the podium and the whiteboard. I like how they are all connected from a telecommunications standpoint. The building is very well wired and connected from that point.”

The Barsemas’ goal was to make the building as accessible to students as possible.

“Because of where Barsema [Hall] is located, the students are going to go there and spend a significant amount of time there,” Barsema said. “We wanted the resources to be right there in the building.”

With little changes to the specifications of the building’s original layout, Dennis Barsema wanted it to be able to be utilized for the future.

“I didn’t want the building to be outgrown. We wanted it to have enough capacity to grow with the College of Business for the next few decades, at least,” Barsema said.

Barsema said that meeting with NIU president John Peters two years ago substantially influenced his decision to make a contribution to NIU.

“It wasn’t until we met John Peters that we really sealed the deal. I saw there was a change at the top and wanted to meet that person and understand where their ideas were and if it was a vision I agreed with,” Barsema said.

Peters said the building is a great addition to NIU.

“It is an amazing construction project,” Peters said. “Dennis and Stacey are extremely pleased with the result. There were no glitches, construction wise, with the project and it was on time and on budget; it’s a beautiful building that is going to stand the test of time.”

The building specifications encompass what the Barsemas thought students would need.

Barsema noted that he was never presented with the idea of constructing a new building, but only ideas to establish a scholarship fund or funding a chair within the College of Business. Upon visiting Wirtz Hall, he knew it was time for a change.

So why donate to NIU?

“Our first choice was NIU. It’s really been a great experience for Stacey and I and our entire family,” Barsema said. “The people at NIU have been great in working with us, delivering the building on time and on budget. They all just did a phenomenal job.”

Overall, Barsema is proud of the building that he hopes will give students a phenomenal experience while attending NIU.

“I was very pleased with the total outcome of the building,” Barsema said.

A grand opening for the building is planned for Sept. 23.

“We’ve diverted our classes so that students will be able to celebrate with us on that day,” Graf said.

Dennis Barsema will be making a major address to NIU’s business program at the event. Students and the public are welcome to attend and will be able to view Barsema’s speech throughout the building via closed-circuit television if the building is overwhelmed with an overabundance of people. Self-guided tours and a lunch tent also will be provided.