Case Method

The job took eight years. Donham relied on his lawyer's training for approaching the teaching of business. He saw a future in case instruction used infrequently since the school's founding in 1908. Under his impetus a centralized Bureau of Research began collecting these cases on a largescale.

Lectures were abandoned and these cases soon became the basis of instruction. Ever since they have been the foundation of the school's teaching. Today Baker Library holds over 21,000 cases. Every student studies about 1,000 during his two year MBA program. And they are copied in over 200 schools in this country

Gradually the case method swung the teaching of the faculty away from the broad view of the economist to that of the single businessman acting within the economy. The faculty continues to teach along these lines today.

Donham next urged the adoption of a first year compulsory program which de-emphasized the traditional topical approach with courses like lumbering and printing. Instead, he and the faculty favored the more general functional approach in finance and production courses. This framework remains essentially intact today.

Business Support

In 1919, Donham called the present condition of the school "intolerable except as a temporary makeshift." "We need funds at once for construction of buildings to house a school of 1,000 and develope laboratory facilities."

Four years after this appeal, a financial drive got underway. For Donham its success was an indication of business's interest in educating future business leaders. Within a month George F. Baker, chairman of the First National Bank of New York, gave the University $5,000,000 toward new buildings.

Twenty-five years later the business community exhibited similar confidence in the school when John D. Rockefeller, Jr., gave $5,000,000 toward Dean David's "Twenty Million Dollar Effort."

Baker's gift enabled the school to collect its scattered bookshelves into a single library, to own its own classrooms and buildings, and to call itself an independent school.

In 1926 Donham brought D. Elton Mayo, a young Australian psychologist, to the school for experimentation in the untried field of human relations. Mayo's pioneering work led eventually to post-war changes in the school's curriculum. Today human relations is a significant topic on the business school campus. It is already the basis of two new post-war courses and is likely to influence the school's curriculum still further.

Another post-war curriculum change goes back to the summer of 1928 when Donham conducted a trial seminar for top-flight business executives to educate them in their community responsibilities.

Out of this project grew today's nationally famous Advance Management program, a week intensive seminar offered to 150 mature executives ranging in age from 35 to 45. It provided the framework for teaching to society and business. Since World War II over 1,000 have participated.

Last year the school also initiated a Middle Management Program for prospective executives aged 25 to 35 who take a 16-month condensed version of the regular MBA program.

David in 1942