The University will begin construction on its new humanities building in Rabb Academic Quad, a project made possible through a $20 million grant by the Mandel Foundation, during the spring of 2009, Dean of Arts and Sciences Adam Jaffe said. The Mandel Center for the Humanities is expected to be complete in the summer or fall of 2010, Jaffe said. The Cleveland-based Mandel foundation focuses its philanthropic efforts on leadership, management of nonprofits, higher education, Jewish education and continuity and urban neighborhood renewal, according to its Web site.

The large gift, Jaffe said, will go toward phase one of the University's larger plan to renew Rabb. Brandeis intends to construct the new, curved building between Schiffman and Rabb as part of the first phase, Jaffe said.

A feasibility study estimated the cost of the entire plan to be over $80 million, Jaffe said. N. Michael McKinnell of the firm Kollmann, McKinnell & Wood Architects is the architect for the project.

The Mandel Center for Jewish Education, established with the support of the same foundation in 2002, will move to the new Center from its current location in the Abraham Shapiro complex, Jaffe said.

"Up until now, we didn't have the resources to do anything with the north end of the campus from an academic perspective," said Jaffe, noting that the buildings in the quad date from the 1960s and 1970s.

"This is an incredibly exciting opportunity for us to design a building to do what we want it to do," he said. "It's really a blank slate, mostly, which we can design to really foster the large mission of the school of humanities . and the social sciences."

In his fall letter to the Brandeis community, University President Jehuda Reinharz described the donation as one of the "largest foundation grants ever in support of the humanities."

According to Jaffe, Reinharz and Morton L. Mandel had discussed the possibility of "a transformative gift to the institution" by his foundation.

Last spring, Jaffe said, Reinharz suggested to Mandel the idea of aiming such a gift toward the University's goal of improving the academic facilities in the Humanities Quad.

"Most foundations don't give this kind of money to the humanities, and my understanding is that the Mandels are very passionate about supporting [them]," Jaffe said.

The preliminary conception of phase one, Jaffe said, also includes the construction of a bridge "that will project through Rabb and is going to end in a tower at the foot of the Rabb steps, which will have an elevator in it."

"Ultimately, [the entire project] will make the whole area handicapped-accessible," Jaffe said. There is no construction schedule beyond phase one since additional fundraising will be required, he added.

Jaffe explained that the University did not intend to move entire departments to the new building. "The Center would be an umbrella for a variety of activities, some of which already exist," he said.

"We have an interdisciplinary program in cultural production that at the moment does not really have a home-it kind of lives with the anthropology department," he said. "We have a Center for German and European Studies, [and] we've been talking about creating a poetry center."

Jaffe said that in addition to a medium-sized lecture hall, classrooms and offices in the new building, ideas for a public space in the building as well as a café had come up in the initial talks, with the goal of bringing together different members of the community.

Jaffe said he has chosen faculty and staff for his advisory committee and is selecting students. The committee will assist in the programming stage of the building process to decide on its exact specifications.

"I'm especially happy that the humanities are at the center of the concept . because they also are, I think, deserving of more attention on campus," Prof. David Powelstock (GRALL), a member of the advisory committee said. He said the possibility of professors from different academic departments having offices next to each other would have "positive academic repercussions."

Director of Academic Affairs for the Student Union Kimberlee Bachmann '08 agreed. "I think it will be great to have a state-of-the art humanities center on campus," she said. "It really shows that Brandeis is interested in making the humanities as good as they can possibly be.