Our History (continued)

The Next Quarter Century: 1950 - 1975

In 1953, the Tuck degree was changed from the Master of Commercial Science (MCS) to the Master of Business Administration (MBA). Dean Arthur Upgren spread the word about the importance of graduate management education in a series of nationwide speeches to business executives.

Karl Hill, dean from 1957 to 1968, initiated the process of transforming Tuck from essentially a department within Dartmouth College, servicing primarily Dartmouth students, into a school with a national and international reputation. Before Hill's deanship, Tuck was predominantly a 3/2 school; for its first 50 years, over 90 percent of the students entering Tuck did so at the end of Dartmouth's junior year. Hill recruited a more diverse student body and many important faculty members as well.

Hill initiated various other developments at the school. The Tuck Associates program was launched in 1964 as an important link between Tuck and the business community. Grants from the Sloan Foundation provided additional money for faculty summer research. The board of overseers, comprising leading business executives and other leaders, was set up to advise the school. Full-time admissions and placement offices were also established in the early 1960s.

Tuck was ahead of the criticism leveled at business schools by two influential reports: the Ford Foundation's Gordon-Howell report and Carnegie Corporation's Pierson report. The school was singled out as having a serious academic curriculum, including the newly emerging disciplines from quantitative and behavioral sciences. Other important curriculum developments during this time included the development of one of the first business and society courses in the country; the new field of organizational behavior; and the Business Policy course, including the Tycoon simulation game, in 1974. Tuck was also a special beneficiary of computer power, when the world-famous BASIC computer language and one of the first educational time-sharing systems were invented at Dartmouth.

John Hennessey, who had been associate dean under Hill, became dean in 1968. Hennessey continued to revitalize the curriculum and recruit new faculty members. He and Hill had long anticipated the need to recognize the educational needs of minorities and women. Hennessey visited dozens of schools to recruit minority students for the Tuck program and served as founding chairman of the Council for Opportunity in Graduate Management Education (COGME). Of great historical significance to Tuck and to the business community was the acceptance in 1964 of Tuck's first minority student and in 1968 of Tuck's first woman student.

Hennessey oversaw several other important changes, including institutionalizing the Tuck honor code and the Edward Tuck Scholars program. In 1971, the Tuck Annual Giving (TAG) program was started. In its first year, 27 percent of the alumni donated $71,000. The same year, Tuck Today, the school's alumni magazine, was founded. Assistant Dean Robert Kimball traveled the country to establish Tuck alumni clubs in the major metropolitan centers. In 1972, Tuck created its own student loan corporation, TELCO. The first Tuck executive education program, the Tuck Executive Program (TEP), was initiated under Professor Kenneth Davis' direction in 1974. Hennessey also oversaw Tuck's role in Dartmouth's first capital campaign and the planning for the Murdough Center.

Murdough Center

In the late sixties, the Tuck School was running out of room. A third dormitory, Tuck Mall, was completed in 1968. (In 1987, this dormitory was re-named Buchanan Residence Hall in honor of William Buchanan, D'24). Still, classroom space as well as classroom conditions were inadequate to meet instructional needs. The tiny library in Tuck Hall was bursting. There was no space to accommodate the explosion of computer activity. Both Tuck and the Thayer School needed some institutional mechanism to bring them closer together. Plans for expanding a variety of continuing education programs were thwarted by lack of space.

The generous response of alumni and friends, capped by a magnificent grant from Thomas Murdough (D'26) and Grace Clarke Murdough, one of the the largest gifts in Dartmouth College history, made the Center a reality. Murdough Center's broad, wedge-shaped brick wings span the Tuck-Thayer complexes.

The 1973 Murdough Center includes Feldberg Library, a gift of Theodora and Stanley Feldberg (D'46). In addition to sophisticated electronic information services, Feldberg Library now houses over twice as many books and journals than did the old Tuck Hall Library. The Center also includes Cook Auditorium, which seats over 350 people for lectures and public events. Three identical classrooms-Ankeny, Barclay, and Stoneman-seat 75 in tiered style for increased student-teacher interaction. Bosworth computer facility (now the Bosworth Career Center) originally housed about 18 computer terminals connected to the campus mainframe. Other rooms in the Center include: the Gillette Group Dynamics Laboratory, Alperin conference room, various study rooms, and, as of 1982, the placement offices and career resources library.

The Last Quarter Century: 1976 - 1990

In 1976, Richard West became dean of the Tuck School. Building on the earlier work of Dean Hennessey and Associate Dean Paul Paganucci, West strongly consolidated Tuck's financial position. Under West's management, Tuck achieved the enviable status of financial independence from the College, thanks in large part to the further flourishing of both Tuck Annual Giving and the Tuck Associates Program. Important results included increases in faculty research funds and assistance, in computer capability, and in faculty recruitment. In 1981, West added the school's first communications and publications office. In terms of alumni relations, fund-raising activities, business community involvement, and sophisticated relationships with the media, West helped Tuck reach out from the Hanover plain.

During the West years, 15 electives were added to the second-year curriculum; the student-faculty ratio dropped from 14 to 1 to 10 to 1; and the number of applications increased by one-third. Harking back to Amos Tuck's activities over a century before, Tuck's highly successful Minority Business Executive Program was established in 1980, the first and most well-known program of its kind.

Perhaps the most significant policy change during West's tenure was the decision to increase significantly the size of the faculty, made possible by a modest increase in the size of the student body, while keeping a firm commitment to Tuck's special distinction as a small school. With Associate Dean Fred Webster, West started the process of hiring these new faculty members.

Between 1983 and 1990, Dean Colin Blaydon and Associate Dean Gert Assmus presided over two expansions. As of 1984, the number of students in each class increased from about 140 to about 160. By 1990, the number of faculty members increased to 36, two-thirds of whom were recruited during Blaydon's administration. The school also drew increased national attention under Blaydon. In a 1988 Business Week survey, alumni ranked Tuck highest in the nation; the overall survey, which included responses from both corporate recruiters and graduates, ranked Tuck third. By the end of the decade, applications for admission were at an all-time high. Tuck also continued to become substantially more international. Tuck collaborated with the International University of Japan to establish IUJ's MBA program, the first accredited English-language MBA program in Japan. The number of international students at Tuck doubled, with more than 20 percent of the Class of 1991 coming from 20 foreign countries.

Blaydon launched the school's first formal capital campaign in June 1986 to raise $15 million for building and endowment. He stepped down as dean with The Tuck Initiative having surpassed its financial goal a year ahead of schedule and with ground broken for the new building, Byrne Hall, the first academic building to be added to the Tuck campus in 20 years.

A faculty mission committee in 1989 concluded that the school was essentially where it should be-strongly positioned as a business school that recognizes equally the importance of both excellent teaching and excellent research-and recommended the hiring of an associate dean for faculty to elevate the school's research profile without reducing its commitment to teaching.

In 1990, Edward Fox became the eighth dean of the Tuck School. Fox came to Tuck from the Student Loan Marketing Association (Sallie Mae), where he had been president and chief executive officer for 17 years. Fox started the venture from scratch and built it into a $40 billion corporation, the 39th largest in America.

With associate deans Ken Baker and Dennis Logue, Fox led Tuck into what he saw as "a new era in graduate business education-an era in which it's important that the Tuck School participate in the dialogues which will determine what graduate education will look like, that the school remain a leader rather than a follower, and that the school continue to be on the cutting edge."

Edward Tuck and his former roommate William Jewett Tucker would be proud of Tuck today. They would be amazed at the changes that have taken place in facilities, in the composition and quality of the student body, in the professional skills and concerns of the faculty, in the variety of programs serving the larger public, and in the career records and the unstinting support of the alumni. They would be pleased to know that the school has remained unique by staying small and residential in character and by maintaining its focus on professional education. They would take special pride in knowing that the school they envisioned and created has never veered from its original purpose of preparing students with liberal arts backgrounds for professional careers in business and, as President Tucker put it at the turn of the century, to provide "training commensurate with the larger meaning of business."

Excerpted from Tuck School History, written by Professor Mary Munter in 1990.

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