Selling is an intimate experience. So, conducting role-playing sales exercises in front of a room full of classmates was a less than ideal fact of life in the College of Business’old home in Wirtz Hall. The program’s new facility in Barsema Hall, the Abbott Laboratories Sales Lab, makes those concerns a thing of the past.

“I have never seen another facility–campus or corporate–that compares,” said Renie McClay, who visited NIU as part of the accreditation team from the Professional Society for Sales and Marketing Training.

Considered one of the technological centerpieces in a building packed with technology, the facility consists of two mock offices, each equipped with three small video cameras and a microphone that allow the proceedings to be beamed to a nearby classroom. The marketing department’s adjacent conference room is similarly equipped, allowing students to also role-play large group presentations that can be monitored remotely. All sessions are videotaped for later review and grading by professors, and students can conduct and tape practice sessions in each of the rooms.