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