Celebrating 125 Years of Transforming Business Scholarship—and Practice

American History Scholar Francis W. Shepardson Becomes the Second Dean
Shepardson became the second dean of the College of Commerce and Administration in 1904 and held the position until 1906. As a graduate student at Yale, Shepardson attracted the attention of William Rainey Harper, and the university’s first president was instrumental in bringing Shepardson to the University of Chicago. A scholar of American history and the author of several books, Shepardson worked for and taught at UChicago for 25 years. He is perhaps best known for his efforts on behalf of the fraternity system. He was a founder of the National Interfraternity Conference, now the North American Interfraternity Conference, and later served as its chairman.

Charles Edward Merriam—Advisor to Presidents—Becomes the Third Dean
Merriam led an extraordinary life. He was a renowned political scientist who was a prominent intellectual in the Progressive movement and advised US presidents. He was a politician who served as an alderman of Chicago’s Seventh Ward, where he developed a national reputation for rooting out corruption. He was a professor who educated students at UChicago for four decades from his own experience in the political process. And he was a soldier who, at 43, joined the US Army Signal Corps during World War I as a commissioned captain. Merriam retired from the University of Chicago in 1940.

A Visionary: Leon Carroll Marshall Becomes the Fourth Dean
Marshall became the fourth dean of the business school when he was just 30 years old, and he played a major role in laying the groundwork for what Chicago Booth is today. Marshall had a bold vision when he became dean: he imagined the school as a “‘community of scholars,” not one that simply offered vocational training, and he envisioned the business school as “a place for truly scientific work.” He worked hard to bring that vision to life. In his 15-year tenure as dean, Marshall succeeded in establishing the first business doctoral program, which saw the first PhD students graduate in 1922. He also helped lay the groundwork for the first scholarly journal of business, the Journal of Business.

James L. Laughlin Helps Create the Federal Reserve System
Laughlin came to the University of Chicago in 1892 from Cornell to create a Department of Political Economy for the new university. At Chicago, he was founder and editor of the Journal of Political Economy and played an important role in shaping the early Chicago approach to economics. A fierce proponent of a central banking system, he was a key member of both the Indianapolis Monetary Commission and the National Citizens League for the Promotion of a Sound Banking System and was instrumental in the passage of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.

Paul H. Douglas Joins the Faculty
A leading economics scholar who published extensively on labor, policy, and other economic topics, Douglas went on to represent Illinois in the US Senate from 1949 to 1967. During that time, he was instrumental in advancing civil rights, anti-poverty measures, and tax reform legislation, among other causes. Before winning election to the Senate, he served as alderman of Chicago’s 5th Ward and joined the US Marine Corps in World War II at the age of 50, winning both a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart.

The Journal of Business Is Launched
The first scholarly journal to focus on business-related topics, the Journal of Business of the University of Chicago played a key role in positioning business as a serious academic discipline. Early issues published research on everything from collegiate business education and Canadian labor law to the personal automobile “as an instrument of injury and death.” Published quarterly, the journal was available at an annual subscription price of $4. (Canadian subscribers paid an additional 15 cents in postage.) The journal ceased publication in 2006 after nearly 80 years of breaking new ground on wide-ranging topics such as stock market manipulations, corporate payouts, and debt maturity.

Garfield V. Cox, PhD ’29, Becomes the Sixth Dean of Booth
A member of the faculty since 1920, Cox had served as acting dean beginning in October 1942. “The appointment of Mr. Cox as head of the School of Business comes in recognition of his long teaching career and his inspiring administration as acting dean,” said university president Robert Maynard Hutchins at the time. Cox achieved national recognition in 1930 with the publication of An Appraisal of American Business Forecasts and contributed scholarly work to a variety of business and finance journals throughout his career. Cox served as the 13th president of the American Finance Association and as an advisor to banks and other organizations. He served as dean until 1952 and retired from the school in 1958.

Business Forecast—Today Known as Economic Outlook—Is Created
Booth is renowned for faculty whose insights and analyses reshape the face of business, markets, and the global economy. The strength of our global business school’s unique perspective is reflected in one of the school’s most venerable traditions, Economic Outlook, which was established in 1954 as Business Forecast. Each year, faculty members and other thought leaders, including Booth alumni, come together to evaluate emerging trends and share key insights with attendees about the state and future of the global economy. Today, events are held in Chicago, London, and Hong Kong each year.

W. Allen Wallis Becomes the Eighth Dean of Booth
Wallis, a professor in statistics at the business school, served as dean from 1956 to 1962. Together with associate dean James H. Lorie, PhD ’47 (Economics), Wallis upended business education with an educational philosophy that became The Chicago Approach, a groundbreaking framework that teaches the fundamental disciplines underlying business operations. “We changed the character of the Business School drastically in ways that other business schools have subsequently followed to some degree,” Wallis recalled in a 1991 interview with Statistical Science. “But at that time, it was considered either radical or screwball—or both.” Wallis left the University of Chicago in 1962 to become president of the University of Rochester. After that, he served in the Reagan administration as the under secretary of state for economic affairs.

W. Allen Wallis Is Appointed a Special Assistant to President Eisenhower
Wallis joined the faculty at the University of Chicago in 1946 and became dean of the business school in 1956, a position he held until 1962. In 1959, he was appointed special assistant to president Dwight D. Eisenhower and executive vice chairman of the Cabinet Committee on Price Stability for Economic Growth. He went on to serve under presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan in a variety of roles, including as a member of the National Council on Educational Research and on the National Commission on Productivity. In 1982, he was appointed under secretary of state for economic affairs under secretary of state George Shultz, his former colleague at the University of Chicago.

The Center for Research in Security Prices Launches
In 1960, professor James H. Lorie, PhD ’47, led the establishment of the Center for Research in Security Prices (CRSP), a complete and accurate stock database to support financial and economic research. Lorie helped collect and research the accuracy of each piece of stock data, including prices, dividends, and rates of return on all stocks listed and trading on the New York Stock Exchange since 1929. The project allowed the average rate of return to be measured for the first time. Today, nearly 500 academic institutions in 35 countries rely on CRSP data to support academic research and classroom instruction, and it is a wholly owned subsidiary of the University of Chicago. CRSP retains a strong affiliation with both the University of Chicago and Booth.

George P. Shultz Is Named the Ninth Dean of Booth
When Shultz joined the UChicago faculty in 1957, he had already started a distinguished political career by serving as a senior staff economist on president Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Council of Economic Advisers. He would go on to work in the Nixon administration and help president Ronald Reagan resolve the Cold War as the US secretary of state. At Booth, he established the first scholarship for Black students at a major business school, created the International Business Exchange Program, launched several research centers, and built the Selected Papers Series, which advanced the school’s reputation by making faculty research readily accessible to the business world. Shultz served as dean from 1962 to 1969.

Sidney Davidson Becomes the 10th Dean of Booth
A nationally recognized scholar of accounting whose research changed practices in boardrooms and on Wall Street, Davidson taught at Booth for 41 years. As dean from 1969 to 1974, he led efforts to improve the school’s facilities and increase the number of endowed professorships. Davidson was among the first advocates of focusing accounting on the value of information, ideas, and fair values that do not appear on the balance sheet. As a result of developments stemming from his work, companies now use some of these factors, including many controversial fair values, when presenting their accounts. In a 1971 article about the influence of the University of Chicago, the New York Times noted that Davidson was “sometimes called the nation’s No. 1 accountant.”

Richard N. Rosett Is Named the 11th Dean of Booth
A passionate advocate of free markets, property rights, and limited government, Rosett joined the University of Chicago faculty in 1974 as dean and professor of business economics. He served as dean until 1982. He also served as a director of the National Bureau of Economic Research, as a board member of several industrial and financial firms, and as founder and president of the US Business School in Prague. In 1982, he received the Wilbur Lucius Cross Medal from the Yale Graduate School Alumni Association. Rosett passed away in 2009. In his obituary, his family noted Rosett was “endlessly curious about all things both great and small, and seized every chance to share that curiosity.”

George P. Shultz Is Appointed the 60th US Secretary of State
Shultz, who joined the Booth faculty in 1957 and was dean from 1962 to 1969, served on president Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Council of Economic Advisers and held three cabinet-level posts in the Nixon administration. As secretary of state, he played a key role in the Reagan administration’s efforts to promote peace between Israel and its neighbors and resolve the Cold War. In January 1989, Shultz was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.

John P. Gould, MBA ’63, PhD, ’66, Becomes the 12th Dean of Booth
Gould became dean after 18 years on the Chicago Booth faculty and a stint as special assistant to US secretary of state and former Booth dean himself, George Shultz. Under his leadership at Booth, the school began construction on what would become Gleacher Center—a $44 million facility in downtown Chicago to house the school’s Evening, Weekend, and Executive MBA Programs. The school also rose to No. 2 in Businessweek’s annual ranking of business schools. Currently the Steven G. Rothmeier Distinguished Service Professor of Economics Emeritus, Gould has been called to testify in many court cases, and his research has been widely published. Gould served as dean from 1983 to 1993.

Robert S. Hamada Is Named the 13th Dean of Booth
Hamada, who served as dean from 1993 to 2001, played a critical role in expanding Booth’s global reach, establishing campuses in Barcelona and Singapore, and launching an international MBA program at the Hyde Park campus. He also built the foundation for a strong alumni network and raised $111 million toward the school’s capital campaign, which included financing for a new campus in Hyde Park. An internationally known authority on finance, Hamada joined the faculty in 1966 and is now the Edward Eagle Brown Distinguished Service Professor of Finance Emeritus. In addition to serving as dean of Booth, Hamada was the deputy dean for the faculty from 1985 to 1990, and the director of the Center of Research for Security Prices (CRSP) from 1980 to 1985.

School Launches Capital Ideas—Precursor to Chicago Booth Review
Chicago Booth Review traces its origins back to the 1960s, when the Graduate School of Business began publishing Selected Papers, written by faculty members for a general audience. Then, in 1997, the school launched Capital Ideas, a separate newsletter that featured articles about faculty research. After evolving into a business magazine of the same name, it rebranded as Chicago Booth Review in 2016. Today, Chicago Booth Review shares research-driven insights on business, policy, and markets with a global audience via its print magazine and its website, where it regularly publishes new articles, videos, and data visualizations.

Edward A. "Ted" Snyder Becomes the 14th Dean of Booth
Under Snyder’s leadership, the school’s global footprint grew significantly, with a planned campus expansion in Singapore, a new campus in London, and a key role in UChicago’s Center in China. He also oversaw the opening of the Charles M. Harper Center in Hyde Park, recruited key leading faculty, and nearly doubled the number of endowed professorships. During Snyder’s tenure, David Booth, ’71, made an unprecedented gift valued at $300 million, and the school was renamed in his honor.

Randall S. Kroszner Begins His Service as a Governor of the Federal Reserve System
In his three years with the Federal Reserve, Kroszner took a leading role in developing responses to the financial crisis and in undertaking new initiatives to improve consumer protection and disclosure, including rules related to home mortgages and credit cards. From 2001 to 2003, Kroszner served on president George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, where he helped formulate policy on responses to corporate governance scandals, government-sponsored enterprise reform, pension reform, terrorism risk insurance, tax reform, currency crisis management, sovereign debt restructuring, the role of the International Monetary Fund, and international trade and development. At Booth, he is the Norman R. Bobins Professor of Economics.

Austan D. Goolsbee Is Appointed the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers
An expert in tax policy, technology, and the economy, Goolsbee played a key role in guiding the Obama administration’s response to the economic crisis. “Over the past several years, he has helped steer our country out of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression,” Obama said in 2011, when Goolsbee left his role as chairman to return to Booth. The Robert P. Gwinn Professor of Economics at Booth, Goolsbee also served as staff director and chief economist for the president’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board. Among his many awards, Goolsbee was a Fulbright Scholar and an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow. In 2002, the World Economic Forum named him as one of the 100 Global Leaders for Tomorrow.

Sunil Kumar Is Named the 15th Dean of Booth
Kumar joined Booth from Stanford’s business school, where he was senior associate dean for academic affairs. Under his leadership, the school expanded student scholarships and focused on recruiting faculty with diverse areas of expertise. He also established the Social Enterprise Initiative (now the Rustandy Center for Social Sector Innovation) and the Harry L. Davis Center for Leadership and expanded the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. He left Booth in 2016 to serve as provost of Johns Hopkins University.

Raghuram G. Rajan Starts His Tenure as the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India
When Rajan took over the Reserve Bank of India in 2013, India’s economy was on fragile footing. During his three-year term, Rajan, who was the twenty-third person to hold the position, was credited with “reigning in double-digit inflation and winning back the confidence of international investors,” according to the New York Times. In 2014, he was named Euromoney's Central Bank Governor of the Year. A former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, Rajan was one of just a few economists who saw the 2008–09 global recession coming. He has received many accolades and awards, including the inaugural Fischer Black Prize, the Infosys Prize in Social Sciences, and the Deutsche Bank Prize for Financial Economics.