A new era for business education

Meghan Diemel

Contributor

October 12, 2026

STEVENS POINT – Renovations have commenced at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point (UWSP) campus on the former Collins Classroom Center, with a wall-breaking ceremony on Sept. 9 to officially kick off the project, which began construction in June. 

Kevin Neuman, head of the Sentry School, said this marks the North Central Wisconsin educational institution’s first steps toward unveiling a new era for its School of Business and Economics. 

A $10-million gift from Sentry Insurance, he said – part of a $98-million investment in total – was the impetus for construction of the newly coined Sentry Hall.

Projected to reach completion in 2028, Neuman said Sentry Hall will serve as home for the newly named Sentry School of Business and Economics, located at 1801 Fourth Ave., Stevens Point. 

He said the project is set to add 20,000 square feet to the current building and will transform the interior into active learning classrooms, collaboration spaces and student-centered areas.

All mechanical, electrical, plumbing, fire suppression and heating/cooling systems, Neuman said, are set to be replaced and updated – adding that a new façade designed to enhance energy efficiency and ensure thermal performance will be installed as well.

“We had outgrown our current facilities on campus, and if we were going to have a more visible role at the university, a new space for the Sentry School of Business and Economics was going to be needed,” he said, emphasizing that the project will serve as both a facilities upgrade and strategic repositioning for the business school.

At its completion, Neuman said Sentry Hall will serve as the home for the Entrepreneurship Center, which will provide students with resources to support business development, including the UWSP Small Business Development Center; the Center for Data Analytics; the Center for Sales Excellence; the Center for Business and Economic Insight and the Ruth E. Salzmann Center for Women’s Leadership. 

He said the new spaces will allow the Sentry School of Business to focus on what it does best – applied learning, hands-on projects and community-focused interactions between students and for-profit and nonprofit entities in the community.

The Anderson Classroom to Career Center, along with the College of Professional Studies administrative offices and the Dean’s suite, Neuman said, will also be located in Sentry Hall.

He said the building will incorporate advanced distance learning technology to connect courses with branch campuses and support place-bound students.

“Experiential learning is front and center to the Sentry School mission,” he said. “We are one of only three business programs, public or private, in the state of Wisconsin to guarantee and require at least a three-credit internship to graduate, because we feel so strongly about that, but it also shows up in how we teach… Within the building, we were able to redesign classrooms to match that brand, and the majority of classes do take a much more consultative, team-based learning environment that facilitates hands-on learning better.”

An investment in tomorrow

With the integral gift of funding secured through Sentry, Neuman said the school was able to leverage that contribution into another $91 million from the state to reach the project’s estimated $98 million price tag.

The project was enumerated in the 2025-2027 state budget and was approved by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin (UW) System in August 2025.

“One of the things the UW System and the legislature, with their allocations, do really well is capital funding projects,” he said. “So, that makes us very different than a private institution… Increasingly – and I think it’s the right approach – the legislature is asking for a private match for projects because the state has limited capacity.”

Sentry Hall, Neuman said, is on its way to becoming UWSP’s most sustainability‑driven building on campus.

Instead of demolishing the current building and starting over, he said the project is prioritizing a strategic refurbishment of the existing structure, which will reduce construction waste, preserve embodied carbon and extend the life of materials already in place. 

To further reduce the building’s environmental footprint, Neuman said Sentry Hall will also incorporate a geothermal energy system to support both heating and cooling, significantly cutting reliance on fossil fuels and lowering long‑term operating costs by tapping into the stable temperatures below the earth’s surface.

Additionally, he said the building will feature photovoltaic (PV) solar panels, expanding UWSP’s renewable‑energy capacity and contributing clean, on‑site power generation. 

The project will take care of needs the aging building already had, Neuman said, while also allowing the school to make improvements necessary to keep it at the forefront of teaching and technology.

“It’s an investment in the future, of course, but it made it more cost-effective as well,” he said. 

From classroom to community

With experiential learning at the forefront of the Sentry School of Business, Neuman said the expanded footprint will be important not just for students, but also community members who work alongside them on various projects.

“For example, a cornerstone of what we do here is [in the] Anderson Classroom to Career Center…, a student services center designed to take students from when they enter UW-Stevens Point and connect them with employer partners,” he said. “We have a corporate partners program where employers are on campus all the time engaging with classes for career panels, networking banquets, etc. The Anderson Center [also] houses our internship program, so that center will be greatly expanded to meet the expanding enrollment demands that we have.”

Having the ability to strengthen these mutually beneficial relationships between students and local business leaders, Neuman said, will build solid foundations for real-life applications of classroom lessons that are already underway.

“We have an Entrepreneurship Center where we’re connecting and really using that to lead the development of an entrepreneurial ecosystem in Central Wisconsin; the university and the Sentry School [are] playing a big role there because we have a footprint in three different counties in this area with our campuses,” he said. “It makes sense that we can play that bridging role.”

In addition, Neuman said that the Ruth E. Salzmann Center for Women’s Leadership will continue to provide not only leadership training for UWSP students, but ways for citizens and local businesses to connect on campus through hands-on learning opportunities.

“All of those [programs] really bridge that gap,” he said. “They break down that barrier between classroom and the community, so it’s very permeable.”

Neuman said the new facility will also benefit students from across campus, not just business majors.

When rooms are open and are not utilized by the School of Business, he said they will be used for classes outside the scope of the School of Business, allowing all students to benefit from the modernized classrooms, updated technology and experiential classroom spaces.

“It’s a significant public investment, but I think in getting the project approved, we made that case, and I think it was obviously a compelling one,” he said. “The programming that the Sentry School provides is designed to be a win-win for everybody here.”

For more information, visit uwsp.edu/finance-and-administration/sentry-hall-project/.