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A place of encounters and innovations – the HSG Learning Center Special topic HSG Learning Center
Since 2019, a new building has been under construction directly adjacent to the University of St.Gallen’s library building on the Rosenberg, in which the university education of the future is intended to be created and tested. The HSG Learning Center will be inaugurated in February 2022 and will be a place where students, teachers and practitioners can try out new forms of learning together.
The HSG Learning Center is intended to be a place for thinking and working which enables students, teachers, alumni and practitioners to try out innovative kinds of learning and interaction. With this new building, HSG wants to pave the way for a new quality of learning in order to prepare the next generation in an increasingly complex world as well as possible for their later assumption of responsibility in the economy, in government and in society.
A place for encounters As a true melting pot, the Learning Center will bring people together who under different circumstances would not have met. Learning from interaction with people outside our own social bubble is of the essence in this respect. HSG students’ encounters with alumni, artists or visitors should stimulate dialogues and learning together. Thus visitors to the Learning Center will meet participants in an external seminar on one day and join an event staged by one of the HSG’s student associations the next.
Exploring uncharted territory “The magic of the Learning Center stems from a variety of sources: from curricular and extracurricular formats, as well as from the encounters that will become possible in this place,” emphasises Dominik Isler, who as the President’s Board’s Delegate is responsible for the directorship of the Learning Center. The building’s overall concept is based on three contentual levels: the curricular, the extracurricular and the informal levels. The first combines existing and new formats of the various HSG programmes, with the Learning Center turning into a display window of outstanding formats that build bridges between disciplines and generations. Conversely, the extracurricular level provides leeway for an integratively curated programme of its own. If, for instance, students and a speaker meet at such an event, the Learning Center will provide space and opportunities to continue and thus further interesting discussions even after the event as such. In this way, the HSG community will encounter extramural
people over a drink at the coffee bar of the Learning Center at the third, informal level. This level, in particular, is intended to foster the learners’ curiosity and stimulate them to make the Learning Center a “3rd place” – a place which, besides home and the workplace, will become an important component for every regular visitor to spend some time in.
Further development of the learning and teaching culture The HSG Learning Center has been conceived of as a catalyst for the further development of the HSG’s learning and teaching culture and is completely funded by HSG through donations. The goal of the HSG Foundation is to support HSG in its development as one of the internationally leading business universities. It initiates and pools funding activities in order to realise strategically important projects for HSG, thus making a contribution to the safeguarding of research and teaching excellence. With overall project costs of CHF 63 m, the
