McCombs School of Business
Department of IROM
IROM : Programs : PhD : History

Brief History

Twenty-nine years after the founding of The University of Texas at Austin in 1883, the McCombs School of Business began as an offering of elective business courses in the College of Arts in the Fall of 1912. The Bachelor of Business Administration became a recognized degree in September 1916. A new School of Business Administration was created in 1922 and then reorganized as the College of Business Administration in 1945.1 The first MBA degrees were granted in 1920 to two individuals, a woman and a man. The "Ph.D. degree with a major in business administration was approved by the Graduate Faculty in 1930, and the first Ph.D. in Business Administration was conferred in the spring of 1934."2 At that time, the University of Texas' School of Business was the only school in the southwest to offer the Doctor of Philosophy degree in business.

"Throughout its first thirty-five years the School of Business Administration maintained its one-department organization. In 1947, given the large increase in the size of the faculty and student body, it was obvious that decentralization was needed."3 Thus, five departments were created:

  1. Accounting,

  2. Business Services (renamed General Business in later years),

  3. Finance, Insurance and Real Estate,

  4. Management and

  5. Marketing Administration. The Master in Professional Accounting (MPA) degree was established a few years later.

As the number of students seeking graduate work increased following the end of World War II, a Graduate School of Business was established in 1964 to administer the masters' programs in accounting and business administration and to confer graduate degrees apart from the College of Business Administration. Fifteen years later the College of Business is re-designated the College and Graduate School of Business.

With the meteoric rise in computer technology and information systems, the Department of Management Science and Information Systems (MSIS) was established in the Fall of 1986 replacing General Business as one of the five departments in the College. In the Fall of 2005, the Department of MSIS is renamed the Department of Information, Risk, & Operations Management (IROM). During the ensuing years, IROM has grown to become the largest department in the McCombs School of Business. The undergraduate program, rated third in the nation by U.S. News and World Report (2001), is comprised of over six hundred MIS majors and offers courses to greater than three thousand students per semester. IROM' "Techno-MBA" is rated second in the nation by ComputerWorld. The highly competitive doctoral program admits less than ten students per year. Nationally ranked within the top five schools annually, the Department currently supports four research centers in: Center for Business, Technology and Law, Center for Research in Electronic Commerce, Risk Management and Insurance Program and Supply Chain Management Consortium. On the cutting edge of research and dedicated to teaching, the world renowned faculty remain at the forefront of technology development and integration, innovative educational models and business/industry applications and consultations.

  1. C. Aubrey Smith, Fifty Years of Education for Business at The University of Texas (College of Business Administration Foundation, The University of Texas at Austin, 1962), cover leaf.

  2. Ibid., 86.

  3. Ibid., 70.

 

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