Smeal History
Smeal History
The Smeal College has had an interesting if somewhat brief history since its founding in 1953. This statement is built around the leadership the College enjoyed even before its founding, and continues to enjoy through its present (fourth dean.) Organizations need different leaders in different stages of their progress toward professional maturity. The Smeal College has had the kind it needed throughout its history.
Before we were a College of Business, we were the Department of Commerce and Finance in Penn State's College of the Liberal Arts. The portraits of our deans are hanging in the dean's conference room. If we included all our leaders, we would actually include an additional portrait.
That additional leader was Professor Oswald Boucke. Boucke was a formidable scholar and teacher. He held degrees in history, and a Ph.D. in economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He was a "tough as nails" administrator and teacher. Boucke was the father of management education at Penn State, as well as the Commerce and Finance Department, or simply C&F. Sometimes called "Cuties and Fun" or similar disparaging names, it had to earn its reputation in the university, as did business programs around the country that did not have reputations as hotbeds of scholarship.
At Penn State and elsewhere, business deserved better, but early on, there was reason behind the reputation. In the early 1950s, there was a national force, largely driven by the American Association of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB)—our accrediting agency—to upgrade the level and seriousness of business education. Penn State was part of that movement, and a decision was made to create a School of Business, which later evolved into the College of Business.
At that time, Milton Eisenhower was the president of Penn State, and his brother, former U. S. president Dwight Eisenhower, was the president of Columbia University. There was no search committee, and no faculty or student participation. If there was Alumni participation, it was not public. The first dean turned out to be Ossian (Bob) Mackenzie, sent to us from Columbia. Bob had some much-needed characteristics for the time. He was a tough leader, firing more than one faculty member during his tenure, and he was a retired U. S. Marine.
When you went into Dean Mackenzie's office, there was a U. S. Flag on one side of his desk, and the Marine flag on the other side. Many of the faculty thought of him not as a dean, but a principal ; they didn't know, at the time, that a principal was exactly what they needed. The College had to evolve into the kind of shared leadership it has today.
By 1973, the College had matured into a reputable regional business school. We were more grown-up, and ready for a dean who could to manage through what some called participative management, and what we called collegiality.
Eugene J. Kelley was our man. Gene was a scholar with a formidable publishing record, and a research professor at the university. He enjoyed the kind of reputation both within and outside of Penn State that equipped him to lead us toward national respect and honor. We were ready to accept that leadership. The faculty base was much improved (for which MacKenzie deserves much of the credit) and the quality of our students had also improved. During the Kelley era, we moved forward on a number of fronts.
One of Kelley's major efforts was to take a deep and creative look at the College, and what we ought to change to prepare us to play in the big leagues, with the schools of business we had previously felt we were not comparable to. He pulled together a team he called the Organizational Task Force. The person he and the faculty chose to lead that effort was Professor J. D. Hammond. That effort led to changes that brought substantially more respect for the College as well as for Penn State.
By 1989, it was again time to change deans. After a thorough national search, the college decided that we were better off with someone we knew, someone whom the faculty respected and trusted, and J. Hammond stepped up to the plate.
By this time, we were mature enough to know we wanted to excel; that we wanted to enter the ranks of the very top public business programs—for which then-president Bryce Jordan was encouraging the entire University to strive.
The first initiative that J. Hammond took was to bring that goal into reality. One of his first acts was to appoint three task forces to provide the basis for the first serious effort to plan strategically. One task force evaluated how the College measured up to the major national criticisms of business education; another put specific measures around what it meant to be a "Top-Ten Public B-School;" and the third focused on the ways that business schools marketed themselves.
The result of this initiative, which Hammond oversaw, was a set of strategic objectives to enable the College to gain position as one of the Top Ten Publics. That effort began in year one, was pursued throughout his deanship, and was one of the hallmarks of his leadership.
The College soon realized that the resources the University provided were not enough to make those objectives sound, so the second hallmark of the Hammond years was the establishment of initiatives to secure resources from alumni, corporate friends and other supporters. As part of this initiative, the college received a very generous gift from Frank P. Smeal and his wife Mary Jean in 1990 to form The Mary Jean and Frank P. Smeal College of Business Administration.
At the time, the Smeals' gift for the College of Business was the largest individual donation in the University's history. It created five endowed chairs as well as a separate endowment for program excellence.
The Smeal's gift was not the only contribution during Hammond's tenure. When he started his service as dean, the College had 14 endowed faculty positions and an endowment of $5.6 million. When Hammond ended that service, we had 35 endowed faculty positions and an endowment of $34 million.
When J. Hammond retired, the College again searched for a new leader—and the result was Dr. Judy Olian. Olian's service as dean began in July 2001, and she moved the college forward on a number of fronts. Knowing the importance of assessment and evaluation, she led the College through an examination and renewal of key academic programs. The MBA program was revised to reflect updates in fast-changing business, and a companion Executive MBA was offered for the first time in fall 2002, in the Philadelphia area. Similarly, she oversaw sweeping revisions to the Ph.D. and undergraduate programs.
One impediment to the College reaching major objectives was its current facilities—a new building is a must for efficiency and success. That also became a reality in Summer 2005, when the college moved into its new 210,000 square foot facility, the largest academic building on campus. Olian was also instrumental in the founding of the College's world-class Trading Room and the Nittany Lion Fund, a $2 million-plus student-managed investment fund.
Olian made the attraction of key faculty and staff a top priority. She was able to secure star professor Don Hambrick from Columbia, and the new department head for Accounting, Dan Givoly, from the University of California at Irvine's Graduate School of Management, a former Chairman of the Financial Standards Accounting Board in Israel. Olian's tenure ended at the end of 2005.
In July 2006, Dean James Thomas joined the Smeal College of Business. Thomas was dean of the College of Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State since its inception in 1999. He is a specialist in strategic management, organizational decision-making, and information technology. Previously, Thomas served on Smeal's faculty for twelve years, culminating in appointments as senior associate dean and professor of management and organization. He is the author/co-author of more than 100 articles, book chapters, reviews and numerous presentations on information sciences eduction before scholarly, industry, and government groups including the U.S. Congress.
