By Cliff Peale
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Miami University's business school has started soliciting gifts it hopes will reach $75 million and enable it to move into a new building in fall 2008.

The campaign by the Richard T. Farmer School of Business Administration is part of an overall MU campaign that has an early target of $300 million, business school spokesman Alan Oak said Friday.

Most of the money raised for the Farmer School would support new programs, faculty and scholarships, Oak said.

The campaign is among the first initiatives of Roger Jenkins, who started in July 2002 as business school dean. Even before his first day on campus, he predicted it would require "tens of millions" of dollars for new classrooms and faculty to raise the school's national profile.

The business school currently includes about 150 faculty members and 4,200 students, nearly all undergraduates.

But universities across the country are pouring money into expanded business-school offerings, particularly graduate programs aimed at working executives.

Jenkins was traveling Friday. But he said a year ago that current facilities were inadequate, and that Miami needed the capital campaign to keep investing in its business-school programs.

"We'll focus on pockets of excellence where we can make a difference," he said then.

The Farmer School is known for undergraduate programs that have produced corporate titans such as former Procter & Gamble Co. chairman John Smale and New Economy leaders such as Greg Jones, former chief executive officer of uBid.com.

E-mail cpeale@enquirer.com