SKEMA's new campus will be located in Funcionários, one of the most active neighbourhoods in the heart of the city of Belo Horizonte, which is set to become the digital hub of the innovation ecosystem of the capital of Minas Gerais and its 2.7 million inhabitants.
This urban campus represents a new milestone in the development of SKEMA's activities in Brazil, which involve the creation of, in addition to the business school's activities, the SKEMA Law School for Business – a law school announced in the SKY25 Strategic Plan launched in January 2020, which has opened its first programme in Belo Horizonte.
With a surface area of about 6,000 m2 on 11 floors, the building has the capacity to accommodate up to 1,000 students, according to the physical distancing measures requested by the State of Minas Gerais and the municipality of Belo Horizonte.
It will open its doors to the school's staff in July and will welcome Brazilian and international SKEMA students at the end of August for the start of the 2021 academic year.
As on all of its campuses, SKEMA's global programme offer will be deployed there: the Global BBA, the Master in Management (PGE) programme, the Global Executive MBA and our different Masters of Science (MSc).
In addition, there are local programmes: the Brazilian bachelor's degree, recognised by the Ministry of Education, which confers the equivalent of a French bachelor's degree, as well as management certification programmes called Nanodegrees, particularly in sustainable luxury and in law and artificial intelligence. This last expertise has given rise in 2020 and 2021 to the largest academic event in the country in this field initiated by the school: the International Congress on Law and Artificial Intelligence.
Designed to match the standard of the recently launched Grand Paris Campus, with a technological infrastructure that facilitates the hybridisation of teaching and work in multiplex with the other SKEMA campuses (auditorium, video wall, touch screens, video studio, etc.), the new Belo Horizonte site also has co-working and collaboration spaces. The building is eco-designed and uses materials and devices that contribute to reducing its impact on the environment: ventilation, LED lighting, water consumption and noise control, recycling, selective sorting, etc.
For Alice Guilhon, SKEMA's dean & executive president: "This new campus, which will host the new SKEMA Law School for Business as soon as it opens, proves once again that with a glocal model, it is possible to innovate by relying heavily on the wealth of the local ecosystem.
For Geneviève Poulingue, director of SKEMA Brazil: "Our new Brazilian campus brings an optimistic and innovative response to students in the current context, which is sometimes difficult for them, and is a natural move for an organisation as visionary and vibrant as SKEMA!"