1959: Growing Costs and Reorganization
Dean Donham reports to the university’s central administration that the School of Business requires more than $600,000 annually, in addition to regular tuition revenues, to support its facilities and faculty development. Donham also recommends that the defunct Commerce Advisory Committee be reorganized as the School of Business Association, which would consist of an advisory committee, an alumni association and a donor group of 300 “Corporate Fellows.”
The Gregg Division is discontinued although the university retains the profitable Gregg Methods Summer Conference and evening program for two more years. |
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 1961: Quant Rules
The MBA Core Program is revised to include more exposure to quantitative analysis and the larger historical and contemporary environments in which corporations operate. This quantitative approach will continue to develop and grow increasingly important over the decade. |
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 1962: Welcome Philip Kotler
Professor Philip Kotler joins the school's esteemed Marketing Department, which boasted scholars such as Harper Boyd, Richard M. Clewett, Ralph L. Westfall and Sidney J. Levy. A graduate of MIT's doctoral program in economics, Kotler helps bring an analytical framework to a discipline that too often had relied upon description. Kotler would go on to earn an international reputation as marketing's most distinguished scholar, writing dozens of books and influential papers on the subject. In the process, he and his peers at the school would create one of the world's best Marketing Departments. |
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 1962: Examining the Undergraduate Program
Associate Dean Ira D. Anderson, director of the school’s undergraduate division, appoints Finance Professor John T. O’Neil to examine the most salient issues facing the school. This effort followed an earlier study in 1958 by Professor of Business History Lawrence Lavengood that examined the relationship between the business curriculum and the university’s College of Liberal Arts program. O’Neil reports to Anderson that it would remain “feasible and practical from an economic standpoint” to continue the undergraduate program, something Donham’s administration agrees to do. At the same time, the school’s leaders acknowledge the market research that begins indicating a trend that will favor more advanced, graduate-level business education. |
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1963: Numbers Are Up
Full-time enrollment in the MBA program has more than doubled, from 90 in 1954 to 2,000, and the number of MBAs awarded annually increases from 79 to more than 175. |
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1964: Efforts in Recruitment
As part of an initiative to increase enrollment by advertising the school’s program to a larger applicant pool that included other divisions of the university and even younger students, the business school participated in the National High School Institute. It attracted fifty “Cherubs” (as the NHSI participants were called) to Evanston who were able to observe the undergraduate business program. The school pursued a number of additional outreach and recruitment efforts, including working with high-school counselors to inform them about business trends and management needs. In addition, the school established an honors program in business and improved the general business major. |
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 1965: The Ninth Dean
John A. Barr is named the ninth dean of the School of Business Administration. An attorney and senior executive, Barr had served as president and chairman of the board at Montgomery Ward, having joined the company in 1938. He also had been a trustee of Northwestern University since 1957. His rapport with the business community helps advance the school’s links with real-world practitioners. |
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1965: Discontinuing the School’s Undergraduate Curriculum
With extensive experience as a legal counselor and corporate executive at Montgomery Ward, Dean John A. Barr is able to assemble a team of practitioners and academics to assess the market conditions associated with business education. In particular, he and his team closely review the viability of discontinuing the school’s successful undergraduate curriculum in favor of creating an ambitious graduate management program that would better position the school for cutting-edge developments in business. While he believes “there is a definite need for an undergraduate business program,” he nevertheless recognizes the challenges associated with marshaling the resources to provide both curricula — possibly at the expense of failing to make a dramatic impact in either arena. As a consequence, the Barr administration recommends to university trustees that the school focus its energies, talent and resources on “achieving outstanding excellence as a graduate school of business administration.” The following spring, faculty would vote two-to-one in support of phasing out the undergraduate business program. Barr tells the Chicago Tribune in December, “Today’s youths are seeking careers that are intellectually challenging, creative, and contribute something to society.” He states that a career in business can satisfy all those objectives and indicates the efforts that Northwestern is making to bolster its business curriculum. |
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1966: Women Welcomed
Dean Barr opens the full-time MBA program to women applicants for the first time. The school previously followed the practice of Harvard and other leading graduate business schools in not admitting women, on the grounds that prospective employers had never recruited female MBAs in significant numbers from fields other than retailing and advertising. |
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1966: Last Undergraduates
The last cohort of undergraduate business students are enrolled before the school phases out the program in favor of delivering an exclusive graduate management education. |
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1966: Business Advisory Council
Dean John Barr organizes a Business Advisory Council composed of leading practitioners. More than 30 top executives contribute their insights to this council, which is headed by James L. Allen, co-founder of Booz Allen & Hamilton. Among those lending their perspective and recommendations to the school are senior members of firms such as Inland Steel, Illinois Bell, Quaker Oats and Northern Trust, among others. |
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1966: A New Approach to Management
The Business Advisory Council, in conjunction with the school’s faculty and administration, explores the future of business education, recommending a new approach to management that embraces a variety of contexts, ranging from corporate careers to service in the nonprofit, healthcare and government arenas. The “general management” model is introduced and will soon come to define the school’s philosophical leadership framework, serving as an important point of differentiation. |
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1967: African-American Students
To attract qualified African-American students, Dean Barr approaches members of the Business Advisory Council seeking their assistance in establishing a committee of businessmen willing to locate financial support for at least a dozen scholarships. Joseph L. Block, chairman of Inland Steel, contacts several leading African-American educators, including James M. Nabrit, president of Howard University, and Jerome H. Holland, president of Hampton Institute, to serve on the council’s committee. Within months, the committee collects pledges from 12 local corporations, including Commonwealth Edison, the American Hospital Supply Corporation, Firestone, International Harvester, the Pullman Company, United Airlines, Hart, Shaffner and Marx, and the General Foods Corporation, who are all willing to provide summer employment for African-American students. In addition, these firms offer several two-year MBA scholarships. The scholarship program for African-American MBA candidates is one of the most extensive programs provided by any graduate school of business administration. In 1968, the school’s minority scholarship fund supports 15 African-American students. |
