Wake Forest University Charlotte Center Featured in the Charlotte Business Journal
Wake Forest’s Charlotte courses will cater to professionals
Reposted from Charlotte Business Journal
Wake Forest University will expand its offerings in Charlotte to include executive education and continuing-education courses.
The university cites growing demand for those non-degree courses. Professionals such as lawyers and accountants are required to earn continuing-education credits each year to meet licensing requirements.
Ron Veith, the university’s Charlotte-based managing director of executive education notes such courses are currently offered only at Wake Forest’s main campus in Winston-Salem. He’s working to schedule the initial courses in Charlotte.
Some classes will be offered through open enrollment, but others can be designed to meet a specific employer’s need, Veith says.
The new offerings are part of Wake Forest’s expanded presence in Charlotte. In March, the university agreed to lease nearly 30,000 square feet on the ground floor in the International Trade Center on College Street.
That uptown facility will nearly double the university’s space in Charlotte. Wake Forest is scheduled to move there in January from the Morrocroft office complex in SouthPark.
The building will be renamed the Wake Forest University Charlotte Center and will house the school’s local business programs, including its evening and weekend MBA courses.
“I think the time was right for us to do something more,” says Yvonne Hinson, associate dean of the school’s programs in Charlotte. “We really are going to be in the hub of Charlotte and the area.”
Wake Forest has 180 students enrolled in its MBA programs here, up from 30 when it entered the Charlotte market in 1995. “We’ve kind of been that hidden treasure,” says Leslye Gervasi, director of Charlotte MBA programs.
As the local Wake Forest campus moves uptown, Veith foresees opportunities for the operation to collaborate with other higher-education providers as well as companies, local government and nonprofit agencies.
And the new, larger space also opens the door to a possible expansion of degree programs, Hinson says.
