Celebrating 125 Years of Bold Ideas and Trailblazing Impact

The School Is Renamed the College of Commerce and Administration
The newly established College of Commerce and Politics had no separate faculty, administration, or curriculum of its own, but it was issued a budget of $5,800 to operate. That changed in 1902. On March 15, a university senate committee laid the groundwork for establishing the new division of the university, and the faculty of the new College of Commerce and Administration held their first meeting on April 26, 1902.

Henry R. Hatfield—Humanist, Scholar, and Accounting Educator—Is Named the First Dean
Hatfield is generally regarded as one of the foremost pioneers of academic accounting in the United States. Born in 1866 in Chicago, he earned a doctoral degree from the University of Chicago in 1897, having previously been affiliated with the municipal bond business. In 1902, he accepted an assistant professorship at the newly created College of Commerce and Administration and became the business school’s first dean, a position he held until 1904. He left to join the University of California at Berkeley, where he held many leadership positions, including dean of Berkeley’s College of Commerce. He was long regarded as “the dean of accounting teachers everywhere,” according to biographer Stephen A. Zeff, and his two books, Modern Accounting and Accounting, were among the most revered reference works in the first half of the 20th century.

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.

World’s First PhD Program in Business Begins
The scientific study of business started here in 1920, with the creation of the nation’s first doctoral program in business. Back then, Booth was known as the College of Commerce and Administration. Today, there are more than 700 PhD alumni globally, many working as academic researchers and scholars at some of the world’s most elite institutions of higher learning.

The First PhD Students Graduate
The doctoral program saw its first PhD graduate students in 1922: Albert Claire Hodge and Waldo Mitchell. Mitchell, the son of a Civil War veteran, was an Indiana native who grew up on his family’s farm. He taught classes in industrial society and business administration at Booth while pursuing his doctorate. During the program, Hodge wrote Principles of Accounting (1920), coauthored with James O. McKinsey, AM ’19, the future founder of the consulting firm McKinsey & Company. Then-dean Leon C. Marshall provided the editor’s preface, describing his vision for the text to become part of a unified and coherent business curriculum, which was lacking at the collegiate level at the time.

William Homer Spencer Becomes Dean, the Fifth of the School
Spencer became dean of the business school in 1924, inheriting from his predecessor a doctoral program and a strong group of faculty. He presided over a series of changes intended to “professionalize” the school. "The University of Chicago," Spencer said in 1931, “is interested in a distinctive program of training for business in which emphasis is placed upon [the] educational method.” Spencer taught courses in a number of subjects, including business law, political science, and Latin.

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.

The First Woman to Earn a PhD in Business Does So Here
Ursula Batchelder Stone, PhD ’29, made history when she became the first woman to earn a PhD in business from an American university. A Bryn Mawr graduate, Stone focused her research on consumer economics and wrote her dissertation on the baking industry “with special reference to the bread-making industry in Chicago.” After graduating, she cofounded a consulting firm, fought for women’s rights, helped revitalize Hyde Park, and taught at George Williams College. Today, with this history in mind, Booth remains at the forefront of advancing women in business.

The World’s First Executive MBA Program Begins Here
The world’s first executive MBA program began at the University of Chicago in 1943, with a group of 52 students meeting two nights a week at 19 South Michigan Avenue. The program was “an immediate success story,” according to professor Walter David “Bud” Fackler, who would later become director of the program. “There was an important market niche to be served,” Fackler added, “and there was a good product presented by a small but excellent faculty.” Today, we bring The Chicago Approach to more than 240 Executive MBA Program students in Chicago, London, and Hong Kong.

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.

John E. Jeuck, AB ’37, MBA ’38, PhD ’49, Is Named the Seventh Dean of Booth
An award-winning teacher and scholar of business history and corporate strategy, Jeuck streamlined the school’s curriculum, focused on faculty recruitment, and opened a new downtown Chicago campus. A graduate of the University of Chicago, where he earned an AB, an MBA, and a PhD, Jeuck served in the Navy during World War II, including three years as an officer on a destroyer escort in the Pacific. He joined the business school faculty in 1946 and stayed there until 1988 except for three years (1955–58) when he taught at Harvard Business School. Jeuck’s 1950 book, Catalogues and Counters: A History of Sears, Roebuck & Company, coauthored with Boris Emmet, is widely considered to be one of the leading business histories of its era. Jeuck served as dean from 1952 to 1955 and was the founder of Booth’s Distinguished Fellows Program, which began in 2003 and provides five select incoming MBA students with a scholarship, leadership education, and the opportunity to build a community and support network that will last a lifetime.

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.

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.”

The National Black MBA Association Is Established
In an effort to build community and promote inclusion at a time when most business schools lacked diversity, a group of Black students at Booth put together a two-day conference of their peers from nearly 30 MBA programs across the country. “All of a sudden, we weren’t isolated,” said Alexander Gabbin, ’70, one of the founders, in a 2020 interview. “We explored what we could do, and what we should do, to promote Black inclusion in business.” The group was incorporated in 1972 and grew into the National Black MBA Association, the leading business organization for Black professionals in the United States.

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.

Booth Pioneers Experiential Leadership Education
In 1989, a group of enterprising students with an appetite for experimentation created LEAD, one of the first experiential leadership development programs at a major business school. Today, LEAD is central to the Booth experience in our Full-Time, Part-Time, and Executive MBA Programs. The program allows students to forge lifelong friendships and gain the tools that they need to enhance their self-awareness and interpersonal effectiveness.

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.

The Business Accelerator Program Begins
The Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Chicago began serving the Booth community in 1998. Now serving the entire UChicago entrepreneurship ecosystem, the Polsky Center provides a wide array of resources around innovation, and it supports the commercialization of groundbreaking research at UChicago. Its top-ranked business accelerator program, the New Venture Challenge, has supported more than 330 startups, which have achieved more than $7.5 billion in mergers and exits.

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.

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.

Booth Becomes a Hub for Social Sector Innovation
The Rustandy Center for Social Sector Innovation—launched by Booth in 2012 as the Social Enterprise Initiative—is a destination for those committed to helping solve complex social and environmental problems. The Rustandy Center leads the charge to build a better world through launching new social impact ventures, funding faculty research, and expanding opportunities at Booth’s Asia campus.

Booth Launches the Civic Scholars Program
Supported in part by the Neubauer Family Foundation, the Civic Scholars Program offers scholarships to Booth MBA students who work in the government or nonprofit sectors. The program, which seeks to bring broader perspectives to the classroom and community, was initially designed for students seeking to enroll in the Weekend MBA Program. Today, the expanding program also supports students in the Full-Time MBA and Evening MBA Programs.

Madhav V. Rajan Becomes the 16th Dean of Booth
A renowned scholar in management accounting, Rajan has deepened Booth’s relationship with the University of Chicago, launching the popular Business Economics track at the College and an accelerated JD/MBA with the Law School, and growing the MBA/MPCS with the Department of Computer Science. Under Rajan’s leadership since 2017, the school has expanded its global footprint across Asia and EMEA, completing the Hong Kong campus and opening a modern new campus in London. Also during this period, the school has broadened investment in newer areas of research with the launch of the Center for Applied Artificial Intelligence and the Healthcare Initiative. In addition, Booth has doubled MBA scholarship funding and extended it across all MBA programs.

Our Global Presence Today Is as Strong as It's Ever Been
With thriving campuses in North America, Asia, and Europe, Chicago Booth takes a truly global approach to business education and leadership. We bring The Chicago Approach to a global audience of accomplished students and executives who represent nearly 50 nationalities. Our faculty’s research has a worldwide impact on policy, business, and society, and our vibrant, 57,000-strong alumni community extends to more than 120 countries. Our new facilities in Asia and Europe are helping position our school, faculty, alumni, and students to succeed in a global economy, and to have even greater impact in all regions of the world.