The historic School of Mines building and the adjoining former Carlton United Breweries site in Federation University's CBD campus will be transformed in to a Business Centre for Excellence after the university received a $9.5million state government grant toward for the project.
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The two buildings will be refurbished in to a cutting-edge high-tech centre featuring a range of learning and teaching spaces, facilities for research and spaces for community and industry engagement.
Around 150 jobs are expected to be created in the construction of the new centre over the next 18 months.
Federation University vice chancellor Professor Duncan Bentley said many of the period features of the historic buildings would be retained during the transformation and the university had been working with Heritage Victoria to ensure the development met all heritage criteria.
IBM Watson Internet of Things will also come on board with the project to provide in-kind support of technology and expertise to help establish the Business Centre for Excellence.
"One of the key features of what we do is innovation and teaching students to do own start ups, to spin off their own companies and work with entrepreneurs so when they leave the university they are able to either, within companies they work for, continually innovate and reinvent those businesses or to have their own startup.
"Quite often students don't realise what the jobs are of the future it's about the future skills required for local businesses and jobs.
"It's our duty as a partner with industry to explain to school leavers, those looking at reskilling and upskilling, where the employment opportunities are we provide the courses, the training skills ...to make sure they can get those jobs and employers get the skills they need to drive their own economic growth."
Higher education minister Gayle Tierney said the $9.5 million grant was part of the state's $350 million Higher Education State Investment Fund which was developed to support universities hit hard by COVID-19.
"Federation University's Business Centre of Excellence is an example of how universities can work with government and industry to make sure regional areas have highly skilled workers to fill highly skilled jobs ... and demonstrate what's possible through collaboration, innovative thinking and sharing of expertise."
Ms Tierney said the university's pitch for the funding had grabbed her attention.
"For me it being a regional university ... the new business centre will be right at the heart of Ballarat, it will be part of a university precinct in a regional town which is very important. It means it has close proximity to a lot of local business, it has of course a lot of proximity and a shopfront in terms of everyone that lives in the will be open to seeing exactly what is available very close to home."
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Professor Bentley said the centre, expected to open in late 2022, would offer everything from short courses to degrees and MBAs.
"The way we are changing the delivery of education means you can have a lot of people coming in and through. It isn't so much case of enrolments as participation in learning activities. People looking to reskill or upskill don't need as long a qualification or training so they might come in for a weekend, week or two weeks so hopefully we will see significant growth in the number of people right across community engaging in life long learning."
