“This is not brain surgery. You can learn brain surgery.”

—Mark Fenske, associate professor, Virginia Commonwealth University Brandcenter

The director of the program never graduated from college. There’s not one Ph.D. thesis to be seen, published, or in progress, by any its faculty. And before walking through the door to his afternoon class, one of its featured professors tells a guest, with Sweeney Todd-like glee, “It’s time for the disemboweling.”

Welcome to the Graduate Brandcenter at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. One part ad agency, one part rogue M.B.A. program, and one part laboratory for experiments in 21st-century branding, the Brandcenter is widely considered the nation’s most demanding, progressive, and acclaimed graduate program in advertising.

In years past, the Brandcenter was known as the creatively driven Adcenter. But the opening in mid-January of a new $9 million facility designed by Clive Wilkinson—the architect behind Google’s “Googleplex” headquarters in Silicon Valley and ad agency Chiat/Day’s revolutionary officeless workplace near Los Angeles—presented an opportunity to give the program a name that reflects its broader and ever-evolving curriculum.

The change includes a planning track called communications strategy and a new track in building a better client, called brand management. Next year, it will include a track encompassing all things interactive: creative technology.

“In M.B.A. programs, students don’t have the opportunity to work with writers, planners, art directors, and account service people,” says Don Just, the former C.E.O. of the Martin Agency in Richmond and the current head of the brand-management track.

“They’re not exposed to the full breadth of the advertising process,” Just adds. “Here they work in groups that mirror the current agency environment. They are constantly exposed to dozens and dozens of projects with teams outside their discipline in environments they can’t control.”

Perhaps this is why last year Creativity magazine named the 12-year-old program the country’s best ad school, BusinessWeek ranked it among the world’s top design schools, and Michael Roth, C.E.O. of the Interpublic Group, pledged $1 million to the program to establish “a pipeline of talented people in our industry.”

A tour of the Brandcenter’s new home with its director, Professor Rick Boyko, a former art director and the former chief creative officer of Oglivy & Mather, reveals the fusion of two eras in architecture and a literal link between advertising’s history and future.

The reimagined 1870s brick building that houses faculty offices is the former carriage house for the Jefferson Hotel. Attached to it is an ultracontemporary geometric structure that contains most of the student-friendly space.

“I thought this would be semiretirement,” Boyko says, as he walks through a new focus-group room that will be used by the future agency planners. “But the last four years I’ve worked as hard as ever.”

Not only was Boyko involved in every aspect of the planning, design, and construction of the new buildings, he personally donated $1 million toward it.

As we walk through the student lounge (partially financed by Yahoo, with foosball and ping-pong tables on order) students skate past on Heelys sneakers while others spread out on plush couches in the lounge area.

Next door is a huge brainstorming room in which two students are playing chess on an enormous poured-concrete community table, and several others are discussing plans for the night.