French Business School Signs Lease To Teach Classes on NC State's Centennial Campus

    RALEIGH, NC, August 04, 2010 /24-7PressRelease/ -- One of France's largest business schools, SKEMA, has signed a leasing agreement with NC State University, which will allow it to conduct classes on the university's research and technology park -- Centennial Campus.

SKEMA expects to start classes with 300 students in January and chose Centennial Campus because of its proximity to Research Triangle Park, corporations and other universities in the Raleigh-Durham area. The school is in the process of opening several campuses worldwide. The Centennial Campus location will be SKEMA's first site in North America. The school must still sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the university and comply with state licensing requirements before classes can begin.

"The addition of SKEMA is an excellent fit for Centennial Campus," said Dennis Kekas, associate vice chancellor of the Centennial Campus Partnership Office. " Not only does it blend nicely with the campus's mission of collaboration between corporate, government and non-profit partners, but it demonstrates how valuable Centennial Campus has become to students from North Carolina to other parts of the world. We're very excited to have SKEMA join us on campus."

The first group of SKEMA students will come from the program's master's of science in management, bachelor's degree and master's in market finance and technology innovations programs. The French school has an agreement with NC State's College of Management to collaborate on academic projects, dual degree masters programs, undergraduate degrees, executive programs, student exchanges, internships and joint faculty research. SKEMA also has an agreement with UNC - Chapel Hill for faculty and student exchanges, and it is developing a relationship with Duke University. The school has also signed an agreement with the RTP Foundation to foster research projects.

Centennial Campus is a 1,314-acre research park and campus owned and operated by NC State University and located in Raleigh, North Carolina. Home to more than 60 corporate, government and non-profit partners, the campus is also home to about 2,500 employees, 1,300 faculty and researchers, and more than 3,500 students during the academic calendar year. Four colleges of the university have a significant presence on Centennial Campus, including the College of Engineering, College of Veterinary Medicine, College of Textiles and the College of Education. The Graduate School is also located on campus.

NC State is the largest four-year institution in North Carolina, with more than 31,000 students and 8,000 faculty and staff. The university's research expenditures are approaching more than $325 million annually, with almost 70 percent of faculty engaged in sponsored research and 2,500 graduate students supported by research grants. NC State is ranked third among all public universities (without medical schools) in industry-sponsored research expenditures.

Website: http://www.centennial.ncsu.edu

# # #