The Walker College of Business is located within Thelma C. Raley Hall. Opened in 1990, the 130,000 square-foot, four-story building is in the middle of the Appalachian State University campus. It was named and dedicated in honor of Thelma C. Raley in 1993.

The building houses the dean’s suite, offices for graduate and undergraduate advising, and facilities for the six departments in the college: accounting; computer information systems; economics; finance, banking and insurance; marketing; and management. There are also separate suites for the Richard S. Brantley Risk and Insurance Center and Transportation Insight Center for Entrepreneurship.

Instructional areas consist of two auditoriums, three lecture halls, 26 classrooms of varying sizes, student computer lab, and eight conference rooms. Three large lounges provide a place to gather and study for undergraduates, graduates and faculty.

The Walker College of Business shares Raley Hall with the university’s Academic Computing Services on the second floor and Information Technology Services on the first floor.

At the time of its completion, Raley Hall received the 1990 Architectural Brick Award from the Brick Association of North Carolina. The building was cited for the use of different colors of brick, for a design that breaks up the mass of the building without dwarfing neighboring buildings, its curved glass block wall and its pedestrian access.

In April 2004 the second-floor Howard Street entrance lobby of Raley Hall was renovated and dedicated in memory of former State Treasurer Harlan E. Boyles. The lobby contains comfortable chairs for seating and tables for study. On the walls are custom-made display cases highlighting memorabilia from Treasurer Boyles’ career and personal life. A built-in media center is available for various college functions.

History Of The College

The college had its beginning as a department in the College of Fine and Applied Arts and was located on the top floor of Smith-Wright Hall. In 1971, the Walker College of Business was established.

In 1976, the College of Business was relocated to a new 55,000 square-foot, three-story building and both the building and college were named for John A. Walker. At the time, the college included 53 faculty members and 1,600 undergraduate students, the largest undergraduate enrollment in the state of North Carolina. The building was utilized at full capacity, and between 1976 and 1983, the number of business degrees awarded increased by 71 percent and the number of faculty nearly doubled.

In 1985, funds for the initial design and planning of a new building for the college were appropriated by the North Carolina legislature. The groundbreaking was in April of 1988 and the building was completed in the summer of 1990.