To study business in downtown Chicago is to study it where business actually happens.

When you’re a student at Booth and studying at Gleacher Center, you’re steps from the leading firms, institutions with global reach, and industry leaders creating global impact—all in one of the world’s most important economic ecosystems.

Here’s what being at the center of it makes possible for your education, your network, and your career.

Chicago Booth’s Downtown Campus. Built for How You Work.

Gleacher Center is Chicago Booth’s downtown Chicago campus, located in the heart of Chicago’s business district, just off the Magnificent Mile, and designed for students who are already doing the work of building a career—or launching one.

It’s home to the Evening MBA Program, Weekend MBA Program, and Sokolov Executive MBA Program. Executive Education programs are also based here, and students in our two specialized masters programs split their time between here and our Hyde Park campus.

The same faculty who teach at Harper Center teach here. The same Chicago Approach™ runs through every classroom. What changes is the format—schedules and structures designed to fit around a career. For students who want a Booth education without leaving the city they work in, Gleacher puts it exactly where they already are.

Two students chatting while walking down the steps near the Gleacher Center

The Right Place for Where You Are

Gleacher serves two distinct but equally compelling propositions.

For working professionals, it’s a campus designed around a career already in motion: flexible, proximate, and immediately applicable. For early-career students in the Master in Management Program and the Asness and Liew Master in Finance Program, it’s a launchpad—placing them at the center of Chicago’s financial and corporate ecosystem from day one.

Your Career Doesn’t Stop. Your Education Shouldn’t Either.

At Gleacher Center, the classroom and the office are rarely more than a few minutes apart, and that proximity is intentional. Evening MBA students move seamlessly between work and class in the heart of downtown Chicago. Weekend MBA students fly in from across the region, with convenient access to O’Hare and Midway, nearby hotel partnerships, and a Saturday schedule built around their lives. However you get here, the frameworks and analytical tools of the Chicago Approach are waiting—and they don’t stay in the classroom.

What You Learn Tonight, You’ll Use Tomorrow.

Class lets out in the evening—or wraps up on Saturday. By the next workday, you’re back at your desk, and so is everything you just learned. A framework from tonight’s session becomes tomorrow’s negotiation strategy. A model you built on Saturday becomes the one behind Monday’s proposal. Because Gleacher Center puts the classroom minutes from where you work—or a short flight from where you live—there’s no lag between learning something and putting it to use. No waiting for the quarter to end for the case study to feel relevant. It already is.

Two students converse while standing outside of Gleacher Center.

Those Employers You’re Targeting? They Are Steps Away.

For MiM and MiF students, the Booth experience spans two of Chicago’s most distinctive locations: the intellectual community of Hyde Park and the financial and corporate ecosystem of downtown. Gleacher Center gives early-career students direct access to the employers, networking events, and professional energy of one of the world’s great business cities, while Hyde Park provides the academic foundation that makes that access meaningful. Together, the two campuses give you the full Chicago advantage.

Special Master students walking and smiling in front of the Gleacher Center

Your Cohort. Your City. Your Launchpad.

The MiM and MiF cohorts are made up of peers from around the world who are at exactly the same stage—intellectually curious, analytically sharp, and ready to launch into a career. That community doesn’t form in a vacuum. It forms in the heart of Chicago’s business district, with the city’s employers, networks, and professional energy as the daily backdrop. From the first week, the city itself is part of the experience.

What Is It Like to Study Business in Downtown Chicago?

Downtown Chicago is one of the world’s leading business and financial centers, home to Fortune 500 headquarters, major financial institutions, and a concentration of industry leaders that makes it one of the most professionally rich environments in the world to earn a graduate business degree.

For Booth students at Gleacher Center, that means networking events, internship opportunities, and a professional energy that makes the boundary between classroom and career genuinely thin.

Chicago is also served by two international airports and a transit system that makes Gleacher Center accessible whether you’re coming from the office or flying in for a Weekend MBA session. To study business here is to be inside one of the most consequential business ecosystems in the world every time you walk through the door.

“Working outside with the sun along the river always makes it feel less like work and more like relaxing with a computer in front of me.”

—Sydney Tsai, MBA ’23, Engagement Manager, McKinsey & Company

Resources at Gleacher Center

Every space at Gleacher Center is designed to support a different part of the Booth experience, from focused study to community connection to world-class research.

Gleacher Center room 100 from the back of the right side looking down at tiered tables and chairs

Classrooms

Gleacher Center’s classrooms are equipped with state-of-the-art audiovisual and conferencing technology, designed to support the rigorous discussion and analytical work that defines a Booth seminar. For working professional students moving between the office and the classroom, that technology means a seamless transition—the quality of the learning environment doesn’t ask you to shift gears, it meets you where you are.

The Gleacher Center lobby lounge with bright windows and angular lighting fixtures filled with tables and chairs

Study and Work Spaces

Glass-enclosed lounges on each floor of the building provide students with individual and small-group spaces to work between classes, each with views of the Chicago River and the city. The five-story atrium at the center of the building adds additional open space for informal study and conversation—the kind of in-between moments where some of the most useful thinking happens.

The Gleacher Center sign on the awning above the entrance to the building

Student Amenities

The building is designed with the full student experience in mind. Students have access to lounge seating, study spaces, and the practical amenities that make a long day of work and class feel manageable. And for students in our specialized masters programs, there’s something more: the second floor was recently renovated. It’s a place to decompress between classes, connect with others, and settle into the kind of daily rhythm that makes Gleacher feel less like a building you visit and more like a place you belong.

Gourmet chicken salad in a bowl topped with crispy croutons

Food Options

Gleacher Center’s catering is provided exclusively by Wolfgang Puck Catering, renowned for restaurant-quality cuisine and on-site preparation. For a student arriving straight from the office, that means a meal worth sitting down for. The surrounding neighborhood also offers a full range of dining options within walking distance along the Magnificent Mile and the Chicago Riverwalk.

Glass staircase inside the University of Chicago Gleacher Center

Administrative Offices

Gleacher Center is where you’ll find many of our administrative and support offices, including for our Executive Education offerings, Part-Time MBA Programs, and the Sokolov EMBA Program.

Host Your Next Event at Gleacher Center

Gleacher Center is also a premier venue for corporate gatherings, conferences, and executive events in the heart of downtown Chicago, built to the demanding standards of one of the world’s leading business schools, and available for organizations looking for an exceptional setting in the city.

Reserve Space at Gleacher Center

The Architecture of Gleacher Center: Designed for the City It Calls Home

Designed by internationally known architect Dirk Lohan—grandson of the legendary Ludwig Mies van der Rohe—the striking stone and glass structure of Gleacher Center rises six stories above the Chicago River.

In a nod to the Chicago School of Architecture, light plays an important role in the building’s look and feel: the five-story atrium inside, and the glass-enclosed lounges extending from each floor, create an open and airy environment that visually connects the building to the river and the city beyond. It is a building that doesn’t turn its back on Chicago—it opens toward it, a deliberate design choice that reflects exactly what happens inside: a school that believes the city is part of the education.