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Loyola University Maryland

Fernandez Center

Two photos showing the glass facade of the new Fernandez Center, attached to the former Beatty Hall

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.

A Green Building

The Fernandez Center is designed to be a green building on the Evergreen campus featuring:

  • Efficient lighting: The Fernandez Center has 100% LED lighting, with eco-friendly solutions like occupancy and vacancy sensing, time-of-day scheduling, and daylight harvesting;
  • Air purification: The rooftop air handling includes a new high-end grade unit that provides UV lights for airstream disinfection;
  • Stormwater management: This system includes a 2,100-square-foot green roof garden, permeable paving, and bioretention garden, designed to help protect local waterways by capturing and filtering 100% of the rainwater that falls on the site for irrigation; and
  • Water conservation: Low-flow sinks and toilets are installed throughout the building, reducing annual indoor water consumption by 40%.

Loyola received LEED gold certification for the building. It is the first building on campus to earn such recognition.

Students work at laptops at cafe tables in the Fernandez Center
Students collaborate and work at laptops in the Career Center lounge
One of the new classrooms in the Fernandez Center
Students working in one of the Fernandez Center classrooms
Classrooms were designed to be open, collaborative spaces that can easily set up to accommodate diverse learning and teaching styles
Four clusters of tables surrounded by chairs with large TV screens on the wall by two tables, and a teacher's station
A food service area in the process of being built
The Fernandez Center features the new Green and Grey Café, designed specifically for and with students in mind
Canisters of coffees and teas atop a display case with bagels and breakfast pastries, with a menu board in the background
Green and Grey Café features quick grab-and-go dining options and local Baltimore offerings
The glass facade on the east side of the Fernandez Center
The glass facade of the Fernandez Center with the original stone Beatty Hall to the right and an outdoor classroom in the foreground
The glass facade of the Fernandez Center with a dark blue sky as evening sets in
The exterior of the Fernandez Center from the south, with trees and Coldspring Ave in the foreground
A view of all three stories in the large open stairwell area in the Fernandez Center
Cafe seating space on the left and Green and Grey Cafe on the right with the living wall in the middle
A female student sits with friends in the Green and Grey Cafe space
A green roof, with Jenkins Hall, trees, and a blue sky visible in the background
The Fernandez Center features a green roof as part of its stormwater management system to promote sustainability
A living roof, with a sidewalk down the middle, with cloudy blue skies in the background
The 2,100-square-foot green roof garden helps protect local waterways by capturing and filtering 100% of the rainwater that falls on the site for irrigation
A living green wall inside the Ferndez Center
The Fernandez Center features a living wall, which improves air quality and reduces noise inside the building
Workers building a living green wall in the Fernandez Center
The living wall also improves a sense of wellbeing and increases productivity and creativity
Tables set up in a circle with conference chairs and floor to ceiling windows
A modern meeting room in the new Fernandez Center offers a 100-year-old view: Jenkins Hall opened its doors in 1922
Students huddle around a table with a large display screen during a meeting
Student Career Center Ambassadors attend a training in a meeting space in the new Rizzo Career Center
Students gathered at tables in the Fernandez Center
Large screens and displays for projecting presentations, media, and more foster dynamic meetings and group work
Students presenting to a class in a large meeting room with floor to ceiling windows
Two tables with chairs and dry erase boards for a collaboration station
The Fernandez Center features various collaboration areas with ergonomic chairs and tables that can be reconfigured for presentations, projects, or studying
Students sit on outdoor benches in a u-shape while a professor teaches at an outdoor chalkboard

Watch the Virtual Tour