No major policy changes occured from then until his retirement in 1942.
That year he left office but not the school. As the George F. Baker professor of Business Administration he urged the faculty to weigh carefully Mayo's findings in human relations. He himself taught such a course in the College.
The United States was at war the year David accepted Conant's to become the school's third dean. He returned to the school he had left in 1927. With him he brought 15 years of bread business experience. He know intimately government officials and top management.
David spent his first years keeping the faculty intact and training over 12,000 officers at the school for war service. Regular graduate instruction was suspended from 1943 until 1946.
Out of this period of academic inactivity came major revisions in the curriculum and plans for expansion. "He challenged us to rethink the fundamental objectives of this school," Professor Edmund P. Learned explained. This rethinking led to three new courses and a closer integration of the first year program:
Administrative Practices (compulsory in the first year), which grew out of Mayo's human relation's work. Its theme was that business is a living organism, not just a machine for profits.
--Human Relations (second year problems between people.
--Business Responsibility in the American Society (first year), a "Big Picture" course designed to instill future executives with an understanding of their obligations to the community.
The faculty also stepped up the Doctoral program. Begun by Donham on a small scale in the late 1920s, this advance training for teaching administration and research has expanded greatly. In his final report in 1942 Donham wrote that the building of such a program would "represent the real maturing of this young school."
The final curriculum expansion was the new Trade Union Program, which, like the Advance Management, Program offers thirteen weeks of training to union officers for administrative responsibilities.
Expanded Research
All this growth put heavy strain on the school's budget. Accordingly, in 1948 David began his effort to raise endowment and working capital for increased salaries, research, and plant improvements.
Out of Rockefeller's gift and an equal amount David raised within a year, the school constructed two new buildings: Aldrich Hall, a classroom structure designed for ease instruction, and Kresge a student center. These were the first additions to the plant since the school moved across the Charles in 1927.
They are the tangible evidence of