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Queen’s School of Business – 90 Years of Excellence
It’s unlikely that O.D. (Oscar) Skelton, celebrated as the father of
business studies at Queen’s University, could have foreseen or even
imagined what was to come. In 1919, he and his colleague, Clifford
Clarke, founded the Commerce degree program -- the genesis of
Queen’s School of Business -- amidst considerable skepticism and
opposition both within and outside the University. The inaugural class
drew about 20 interested students and graduated four in 1922; the
curriculum was weighted heavily in accounting and banking courses;
and the entire faculty consisted of three professors.
Nearing a century later, Queen's School of Business is one of the
world's premier business schools, consistently capturing top
international rankings for its programs and learning environment and
attracting top students from across Canada and around the world.
This 90th anniversary milestone offers an opportunity to reflect on
the School’s rich history of surmounting considerable odds to become
a force in business education in Canada. While many at Queen’s were
disdainful of allowing matters of business to taint the rarefied
intellectual world of higher education, Skelton and Clark argued that
business training was essential “and this professional point of view
must be spread among business men as widely and as rapidly as
possible if we are to be saved from the dangers of a crudely acquisitive
society.” They saw this profession as a high calling indeed, but clearly
did not foresee that there would be business women as well as men.
In the early 1900s, the North American business world was
undergoing dramatic changes, including the emergence of industry as
a dominant societal force, the expansion of specialized jobs as a means
of spurring productivity, and the birth of modern-day corporations
with their massive work forces.
Business Education as Serious Business
The time had come to take business education seriously. Queen’s
had begun testing the water by introducing a banking program in 1914.
Certified Accountant extension courses were added in 1921 (a
pioneering move), but it was the on-campus Bachelor of Commerce
program launched in 1919 that was Queen’s ultimate answer to the
need for professionally trained managers with a formal business
education. This combination of Canada’s first undergraduate program
in business studies and a selection of business correspondence
offerings were the bedrock upon which Queen’s began to build its
current enviable reputation in the field.
A related development was the founding of the Industrial Relations
diploma program in 1937 by William A. (Bill) Mackintosh, MA’16, a
professor with an entrepreneurial spirit who would go on to become
Queen’s 12th principal in 1951. At the same time as Industrial
Relations became a specialty, Queen’s Board of Trustees voted to
create a separate School of Commerce and Administration under
Mackintosh as Director. Until then, the business programs had been
part of the Department of Economics and Political Science within the
Faculty of Arts. The merger of the new IR unit with all
commerce-related courses under the separate entity of the new School
greatly elevated the profile of business education at the University.
Queen’s School of Business – 90 Years of Excellence 1
Vets Bring Post-War Challenges
The Second World War had a profound impact on the Commerce
program, with the number of business students dropping as low as 14
during the war years. When the war ended, however, there was an
enrolment surge as returning soldiers took advantage of veterans’
educational funding and flocked to programs that they knew would
give them an advantage in the highly competitive post-war job market.
After a few years of this intense activity, the School entered a quiet
period. Accounting professor R.G. H. (Reg) Smails had taken over as
Director. He lamented disappointing enrolment figures, attributing
them not only to increased competition from new business schools, but
to an over-emphasis by the Queen’s program on banking and
accounting. He set about broadening the curriculum.
That lull proved deceptive, however; Queen’s would not be left
untouched by the revolution in business education that was underway
world-wide. Two major American studies on business education by the
Ford and Carnegie Foundations urged a more policy-oriented focus,
more quantitative research and analysis, and a greater emphasis on
graduate courses.
A new path for business education was being forged. It was no
longer enough to train a Commerce grad in the principles of economics
and money management. A new generation of business leaders would
be required to think ‘big picture’ and have a strong grasp of
management and business policy. The advent of the post-war
consumer society and the unmatched buying power of a population
ready to be housed and made mobile also meant that marketing
courses would now become a staple of the curriculum.
Dunning Hall: Modern Homefor a Growing School
By 1960, the School had moved from its severely cramped Union
Street East quarters in what was called simply the Commerce Building
(former site of the more picturesquely named Home for Friendless
Women and Children) and into the modern luxury of Dunning Hall at
the corner of University Avenue and Union Street, facing the Douglas
Library. The change in location was accompanied by a change in
mindset and a renewed passion from within the ranks of faculty.
The potential for world-class status and an ability to compete for
students internationally was foreshadowed during this period, for
Queen’s had begun to explore establishing an MBA program and
entering the realm of executive education.
In the academic year 1960-61, the two-year Master of Business
(MBA) program was offered for the first time – a course of study
heavily influenced by new thinking about graduate business education
coming out of the northern U.S.
Another milestone was reached in May of 1963, when Queen’s
Board of Trustees endorsed faculty status for the business school and
named Lawrence G. Macpherson as its first Dean. (To put this in
historical perspective, the move made Commerce Queen’s fifth faculty,
after Arts, Medicine, Applied Science and Law and just ahead of the
revived Faculty of Education.)
This change in status coincided with a challenging period in the life
of the School. Despite lower enrolments, there were still not enough
professors, and the School seemed to be facing an identity crisis as it
addressed these challenges. The debate had begun in earnest over what
kind of curriculum would best prepare the next generation of business
leaders.
Fortunately, a demographic shift brought a solution. “The (Baby)
Boomer generation hit the universities. Suddenly enrolment in
business exploded, and the School desperately needed expanded
facilities and more professors,” says Merv Daub, BCom’66, co-author
with fellow professor emeritus Bruce Buchan of Getting Down to
Business: A History of Business Education at Queen’s 1889-1999. “To
suggest that the faculty of 15 people was spread a bit thin is an
understatement.”
This boom meant that Dunning Hall could no longer hold the whole
School. Mackintosh-Corry Hall, opened in the 1970s,was designed
with links to Dunning that accommodated Business professors’ offices
and QSB classrooms and study areas.
Queen’s School of Business – 90 Years of Excellence 2
Charting a New Course
With the appointment of Richard J. (Rich) Hand as the School’s
second Dean in 1966, the School began “a transition of extraordinary
proportions,” wrote Daub and Buchan. A new philosophy of business
education began to take hold, one influenced by Hand’s experiences as
a graduate student and teacher at the University of Chicago. The
emphasis was now on the theory behind management and on
aggressively recruiting the faculty who could undertake research about
how this could be applied to traditional courses in accounting, finance
and the workings of the production line. “It was quite a dynamic time,”
says Daub, who had just returned to his alma mater to teach after
completing his PhD at the University of Chicago. “There were 15 or 20
new faculty hired, all with PhDs from the U.S.”
Canada needed some PhDs of its own, and so another QSB
milestone was achieved in the late 1970s. After aggressively lobbying
the provincial government, the School succeeded in acquiring approval
and funding for a PhD program. The School was also coming into its
own as a significant source of scholarly work. “Research output, in the
form of books, articles in learned journals and presentations at
academic conferences, was now appearing with increasing regularity, a
very different circumstance from ten years earlier,” wrote Daub and
Buchan. During this period, Daub launched Inquiry magazine (the
precursor of QSB Magazine) to build awareness amongst alumni and
the public of the intellectual work underway at the School.
Tensions within professional schools between proponents of a
theoretical versus an applied approach to curriculum are the norm. At
QSB these came to a head in the late 1970s when John Gordon,
MBA’63, was appointed Dean. Convinced the program had become too
theoretical and lost touch with the interests of industry and business,
he engaged corporate advisors, again emphasized Executive
Education, and built ties to local businesses through the Small
Business Consulting program. He also threw his considerable weight
as Dean behind the Commerce Society-initiated QBET (Queen’s
Business Environment Today [Conference] and the ICBC
(Intercollegiate Business Competition), both of which continue to
operate successfully to this day.
Professor Don Nightingale was put in charge of “kick starting” the
three-week, residential Executive Program, the ‘jewel in the crown’ of
the School’s executive education programs, with the Donald Gordon
Centre near the West Campus as its home base. “Nightingale took over
and never looked back,” says Merv. “It would, in time, grow in size and
reputation to be the foremost program of its kind in North America,
providing an important source of discretionary funds both to the
School and the University.”
Shifting the Gender Balance
At this point, the School was also changing in a more fundamental
way. What had long been an almost exclusively male enclave was by
the late 1980s beginning to see a significant shift in gender
demographics. “In the ‘80s, Queen’s was joining in the belief in Canada
that to educate men and women equally in the professions was the key
to having them equally represented in management and the
professions,” says QSB professor Carol McKeen, MBA’76, an expert in
gender issues in management. During this period, business professors
were given equity training to prepare them for the presence of more
women in classrooms.
Although the number of women students had grown slowly but
steadily since the 1950s, it took until the 1990s for the School to begin
to see a significant number of women on faculty. McKeen, the first
woman hired as a tenure-track professor, in 1982, credits Dean David
Anderson with being instrumental in bringing about a more
representative faculty complement, hiring nine women during his
deanship (1989-95). Currently about one-third of the faculty are
women, slightly above the average at business schools around the
world.
Going Global
The School was also becoming increasingly international. Largely
through the efforts of Professor David Rutenberg (from the mid-‘80s
to mid-‘90s), the number of exchange agreements with business
schools in other countries flourished. Not only were European and
other international business schools interested in sending their
students to Queen’s, but also, at one point, QSB had far more student
exchange agreements than the rest of the University put together. The
trend has continued. Now, at least three quarters of third-year
Queen’s School of Business – 90 Years of Excellence 3
Commerce students go on exchange. International study
opportunities are part of the full-time and Executive MBA programs
and are compulsory for students in the new Master of Global
Management degree program.
The School achieved an unprecedented level of national attention
when it launched its 12-month MBA for Science and Technology,
welcoming the inaugural class in 1996. The brainchild of Ken Wong,
BCom’75, MBA’76, Commerce ’77 Fellow in Marketing, the new
specialized MBAst program was the first non-government-funded
degree program in Canada. “It was a revolutionary concept, a business
that practised what it preached,” recalls Ken. “It was a textbook
execution of a marketing strategy. But what brought me the most pride
was not what we did but that we did it at all. Over criticism from
virtually every other business school in Canada, Dean Anderson had
the strength of conviction to innovate. We not only succeeded, but we
also reshaped the face of MBA programming in Canada. Other
Canadian business schools soon followed our lead, and a whole range
of 'privatized’ and often specialized MBA programs have since sprung
up across the country.”
Another historic moment in the life of the School was the
appointment of Margot Northey as Dean in 1995 -- the first female
business dean in Canada. With her background in communications,
she was determined to see the School recognized on the world stage. To
garner the financial and alumni support needed to achieve the School’s
goals, she reached out personally to major donors. It was during her
term that Mel Goodes, BCom’57, LLD’94, former CEO of
Warner-Lambert (now part of pharmaceutical giant Pfizer), donated
$10 million towards the building of a new home for the School. Called
Goodes Hall in his honour, it incorporates Kingston’s historic Victoria
School on Union Street between Alfred and Frontenac streets. Its
official opening in September 2002 marked the first time since the
early years of Dunning Hall that all the School’s facilities could be
located under one roof.
Laurels Won
The current decade has seen the School maintain its status as a
world leader in innovative programming while reaching new levels of
research and teaching excellence. Its reputation, under Dean David
Saunders’ leadership since 2003, has never been stronger. The
School has been consistently ranked among the best in the world. In its
most recent rankings in 2008, BusinessWeek magazine (U.S.) ranked
Queen’s full-time MBA as number one in the world outside the U.S. for
the third consecutive time.
In recent years, QSB has continued to pioneer new programs,
including its Accelerated MBA for Business Graduates, Canada’s first
MBA designed specifically for people with an undergraduate business
degree; the Cornell-Queen’s Executive MBA, delivered in partnership
with Cornell University’s Johnson School of Management; and the
Master of Global Management degree program designed for alumni of
undergraduate business programs with aspirations in international
business. A strong global focus is also reflected in the School’s
aforementioned exchange program, with approximately 70
top-ranked partners.
QSB continues to garner an increasing share of research grants,
faculty awards and the publication of research papers in top-tier
journals, a testament to the high calibre of scholarship at the School
and the successful recruiting of outstanding faculty from around the
world. The quality of the School’s students is also evident through an
exceptionally strong track record of top showings at national and
international competitions.
In envisioning a place for business studies in higher education and
in establishing the Commerce degree program 90 years ago, Skelton
and Clark laid the foundation. A succession of forward-thinking,
far-sighted and dedicated leaders provided the framework for the
innovative programs and sophisticated learning environment that
emerged. And generations of brilliant and distinguished faculty,
students and alumni continue to further reinforce the School’s
reputation for excellence.
“So many visionary and committed people have played a role over
the past century in building what has become an unsurpassed learning
and research environment. And our journey is far from over,” says
Dean Saunders. “I look forward to building a future for Queen’s School
of Business that is as extraordinary as its past.”
Queen’s School of Business – 90 Years of Excellence 4
Author Anne Kershaw, in
writing this brief history, relied heavily on Getting Down
to Business: A History of Business Education at Queen’s
(1889-1999) by Mervin Daub and P. Bruce Buchan.
Queen’s School of Business
Goodes Hall
Kingston, Ontario
Canada K73N6
www.business.queensu.ca
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