Dean Vanderblue retires due to ill health. Finance Professor Paul L. Morrison serves as the school’s chief administrative officer.

Thanks to Dean Vanderblue’s attention to undergraduate instruction and reform, the School of Commerce’s undergraduate program has become one of the most attractive of its kind in the nation. With its primary strength lying in a traditional, technical-driven undergraduate program, the school is considered somewhat conservative in comparison with other leading graduate schools of business.

The Board of Trustees appoints Joseph McDaniel Jr., professor of business administration, as the school’s sixth dean. He immediately begins revitalizing and consolidating the graduate program on the Chicago campus.

The Graduate Commerce Division moves from Evanston to Wieboldt Hall on the Chicago Campus. Dean Davies writes that the faculty had previously considered “moving the Graduate Division to the Chicago campus, using the day-time facilities in Wieboldt Hall and establishing a real Graduate School of Business Administration in the Middle West (Harvard in the East and Stanford in the Far West). In fact this proposition was in our minds and affected to some extent the planning for Wieboldt Hall in 1924. No definite steps were taken as a variety of events transpired to postpone action, the depression and recover, Heilman’s death, two deans in two years, etc. When Homer [Vanderblue] might have been ready to consider the move, the war and postwar conditions occupied the attention of everyone.” [Sedlak 283-284; Ernest C. Davies to Joseph McDaniel (31 October 1949), Franklyn Bliss Snyder Papers, Northwestern University Archives]

General Robert W. Johnson, of the Johnson & Johnson Co., contributes more than $90,000 to the program in hospital administration between 1945 and 1950.

The School of Commerce launches the Institute for Management. A pioneering executive education curriculum, this summer program introduced corporate leaders to frameworks addressed the firm as a whole, and which addressed business within the context of changing economic, social and political environments. Faculty approached their subject from a general management perspective — still novel for the time — and offered an intensive four-week course whose purpose was to broaden executives to meet evolving market dynamics. Of particular value was the program’s ability to develop modern executives, a special challenge given the managerial shortages resulting from World War II and, earlier, the Depression. “If, in the old days, managers in sufficient numbers had matured in the natural course of business, and replacements for top positions were always ready for the picking, such was no longer the case,” reflected Dean Richard Donham in 1958. “Nor was the top executive of yesterday sufficient unto the new day.”

The Institute for Management quickly becomes a model for many other university executive programs. At the Northwestern program, nearly all participants are over 35 years old (their median age is 43), holding positions of responsibility. During the program’s first decade, more than 8,000 senior executives attend the Institute, ordinarily offered twice each summer. Tuition, typically assumed by the participant’s company, is $1,000 for the Institute’s inaugural year.

Dean McDaniel resigns to accept a position with the Ford Foundation. The school appoints accounting professor Ernest C. Davies as its seventh dean.

Richard Donham, professor of business administration, helps develop the Institute for Management, an intensive summer program for executives and one of the first nondegree executive education programs in the nation. Over time, executive education would become increasingly important for the school, which establishes itself as a leader in the field.

The School of Commerce creates the Gregg Division, a commercial and secretarial program that offered specialized training through the Secretarial Certificate Program, the Executive Secretarial Diploma Program, and the Shorthand Reporting Program. John Robert Gregg, developer of the shorthand method, had established Gregg College in Chicago in 1896. The school had been a national leader in secretarial and business-teacher education. When McGraw-Hill acquired the Gregg Publishing Company, it also gained control of Gregg College, which had been operated by the publishing company. McGraw-Hill turned the school’s management and assets over to Northwestern, and the administration placed the Gregg program under the School of Commerce, since Dean Homer Vanderblue had already established a secretarial science division during World War II. Vanderblue’s effort was an attempt to attract more women to Northwestern to replace the men leaving for military service. Commerce faculty agreed to administer the Gregg school because it had been very profitable, and after its absorption by the university, all surplus income was to be given to the School of Commerce. Professor Russell Cansler, director of the secretarial science division, administered the Gregg Division and set about improving its curriculum.

Business administration professor Richard Donham is named the eighth dean of the school. A Harvard graduate, Donham taught corporate organization and management at Harvard Business School and the Yale Law School before being recruited to Northwestern by Dean Vanderblue in 1940 as a professor of business administration.

Strongly committed to graduate and professional training programs, Donham sought to replicate the Harvard teaching model at Northwestern. As dean, he would encourage use of the case system and recruit students with business experience, including those already in management positions who wished to further their education through the Institute for Management. Donham also negotiated with the university for more autonomy for the school, advocating for separate dormitories, libraries, curriculum, administration, and a separate budget that would return to the school all the revenues it generated.

Between 1949 and 1953, the school takes steps to revitalize its graduate program—the first stage of a five-stage process that would span two decades. The reforms include revising admission standards, deemphasizing technical specialization, and establishing one of the nation’s first executive development programs. One challenge for business schools was that many companies still actively recruited specialists even while the executives at those companies publicly decried the lack of “well-rounded” managers whose education included a liberal arts approach to study.

The School of Commerce becomes the School of Business Administration, and the Graduate Commerce Division becomes the Graduate School of Business Administration. The name changes are designed to better reflect the school’s revised focus and to emphasize clearly the separation of graduate from undergraduate programs.

Part-time evening graduate enrollment declines from 1,683 in 1954 to 442 in 1956, while full-time graduate enrollment increases from 90 to approximately 200.

With financial support from the Ford Foundation totaling $500,000, Dean Richard Donham and the faculty of the Northwestern University School of Business reduce the level of functional specialization in the curriculum by expanding the scope of the general business major and by eliminating many of the fields available for concentration, such as real estate, advertising and hospital administration. Instead, the school focuses on integrating its offerings across interdisciplinary lines while simultaneously strengthening quantitative and other areas of study.

Faculty and administration begin to “liberalize” the undergraduate business courses by streamlining and combining many of the existing narrow business fields. For example, the school consolidates accounting, statistics and mathematics under the broader aegis of quantitative controls for business.

Dean Richard Donham announces that the Ford Foundation has awarded the school $250,000 to further the development of the undergraduate program. He secures another $250,000 grant from the Ford Foundation in 1960.

The school hires Donald P. Jacobs, an economist trained at Columbia University. Jacobs joins the Finance Department and begins what will prove a celebrated career as a scholar and administrator.