The School opened its doors to its pioneer batch of Bachelor of Business Management (BBM) students in August 2000 at a two-storey building along Evans Road . In the second academic year, SMU and the School relocated to the Bukit Timah Campus - formerly home to tertiary institutions such as the University of Singapore and the National Institute of Education (NIE), before moving to its permanent cam
pus at the historic Bras Basah district in 2005, in close proximity to the business and financial centre of Singapore . In 2004, the Lee Foundation contributed S$50 million to SMU, in honour of the late Dr Lee Kong Chian, a well-known Southeast Asian businessman, philanthropist and community leader. In response to the Lee Foundation's exceptional contribution, the Singapore Government agreed to provide matching grants on a 3:1 basis, bringing the total sum to S$200 million, the largest ever contribution to a Singapore tertiary institution and one of a handful of over-US$100 million-gifts made to universities worldwide. In recognition of the Lee Foundation's generosity, SMU named in perpetuity the School of Business , the building and the university-wide scholars programme after Dr Lee Kong Chian. The School of Business is now called the Lee Kong Chian School of Business and the scholars programme, the Lee Kong Chian Scholars Programme. Today, the Lee Kong Chian School of Business is a dynamic Asian business school with over a hundred full-time faculty and more than two thousand five hundred students. The school offers undergraduate, master's (including MBA and EMBA) and doctoral programmes and is affiliated with a number of active research centres such as the Institute of Service Excellence and the Centre for Marketing Excellence.
