McCombs School History
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1883
The University of Texas at Austin is founded on 40 acres near the state capital building.
1912
The Department of Business and Commerce is established in the College of Arts, the first professor is Spurgeon Bell, who offers a course in the elements of accounting and another in banking practices.
Room and board is $18.00 and tuition is free.
1916
The degree of Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) is offered at the University, and the first BBA is awarded to Frederick Ward Adams of Beeville, Texas. Adams goes on to become president of the Adams Extract Company, located just south of Austin, which is still in existence today.
The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) is founded with UT as a charter member, even though it is only a department and not yet an independent school.
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1919
New faculty members in the business department include the first female,
Miss Florence Stullken, instructor of shorthand and typing. She teaches at the School
until her retirement in 1958, as head of secretarial and teacher training.
1920
New courses are added to the department’s offerings, including one on federal taxes and one
on CPA problems.
The department grants the first Master of Business Administration degree. Graduate degrees are conferred by the College of Business until the separate Graduate School of Business is established in 1964.
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1922
The School of Business Administration is established separate from the College of
Arts by an act of the Regents and is to become operative in the 1922-23 school year.
Up to this time, 132 BBAs and 10 MBAs have been awarded.
Spurgeon Bell is elevated from Chairman of the Department of Business Training to Dean of the School of Business Administration.
In the first year of the School’s establishment, 45 students earn BBAs, including seven women. There are six full-time teachers in the one-department school.
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1923
An oil well on University lands in Reagan County, dubbed Santa Rita (Saint of the Impossible) blows, ensuring a prosperous future for the University of Texas.
1924
Business School officials raise admission standards in order to curb the rapid growth in the number of students.
Miriam “Ma” Ferguson becomes the first female governor of Texas.
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1925-26
E. Karl McGinnis becomes acting dean until J. Anderson Fitzgerald
can be persuaded to return to the University after a leave of absence to earn his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. Fitzgerald, professor on and off since 1918, is named dean. Fitzgerald, very distinguished in his field, is also president of the AACSB.
Alonzo B. Cox, famous in the field of cotton marketing, joins the teaching staff and establishes the Bureau of Business Research.
1929
The Stock Market crashes ushers in the Great Depression.
1930
The School of Business is authorized to grant the Doctor of Philosophy degree in business. It is the only school in the southwest to offer this degree.
1931
“Actual business experience is required of every student before he receives a degree from the School of Business Administration, Dean J.A. Fitzgerald has announced. Each student who expects to receive the Bachelor of Business Administration degree must have from three to six months in business experience gained after graduation from high school....“The plan is followed, Dean Fitzgerald said, in order that the student may acquire practice in business as well as a knowledge of the theories governing it.”
From a news clipping, January 18, 1931
1932-33
As a result of the Depression, students just out of high school find it difficult to locate jobs; hence, parents make sacrifices to send their sons and daughters to college; reductions in staffs of business concerns cause many adults to return to college to complete their education; and financial assistance for tuition is provided by the federal government. These factors combine to swell enrollment at the University and in the Business School to almost unmanageable proportions.
From C. Aubrey Smith’s Fifty Years of Education for Business at The University of
Texas.
A Queen of Finance is now being crowned during the annual spring banquets.
1934
The first Ph.D. is awarded in the Business School.
1937-39
Newspapers announce an economic upturn, mostly due to the war in Europe. Economists agree that early peace in Europe will likely bring a temporary recession to American business.
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1940
ROTC is established on campus as American involvement in W.W.II becomes imminent. The formation of ROTC is strongly supported by the Business School. Many students drop out to join the armed forces, and those who remain on campus join the reserves.
Career placement services are for the first time officially extended to students.
1941
The teaching staff of the Business School consists of 11 professors, six associate professors, five assistant professors, and 10 part-time instructors.
1944
A woman is elected Daily Texan editor in 1944, and another becomes president of the student body in 1945 when the male president resigns.
Only 98 male students enroll at the School, down from 542 in the 1940-41 school year. Female enrollment rises 100% in the same time period.
1945
The School of Business Administration is reorganized as the College of Business Administration, now admitting freshmen and sophomores as well as juniors and seniors into the program.
1946
The famous Herman Sweatt case, which opens the University to its first Black student, begins litigation. Denied entry in 1946, Sweatt begins pursuing his rights through the courts.
1947
The College is departmentalized into five components:
- Finance, Real Estate, and Insurance
- General Business (later Business Services)
- Marketing
- Management
- Accounting
1948-49
Enrollment in the undergraduate program is 1,102.
The Master of Professional Accounting (MPA) degree is established in the College of Business.
1950
W.R. Spriegel is named Dean of the School; his first act is to appoint assistant and associate deans to improve services to students. Among his accomplishments: the recruiting of an outstanding faculty.
1951
The first BBA Alumni conference is held and draws graduates since 1919.
1952
The Dallas accounting firm of Peat, Marwick, Mitchell and Company establishes the first student fellowship. They give five awards of $1,000 each to students specializing in petroleum accounting.
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1955
The first Executive Education programs are offered.
1959
John Arch White is named Dean of the School.
1960
Fifteen prominent business people are named to the Advisory Council of the College. Their objectives are as follows:
- To help provide necessary contacts for faculty, to aid the faculty in gaining access to research data, and perhaps, to provide summer employment.
- To improve further placement services.
- To provide the college with continuing contact with the business world.
- To aid in raising necessary financial support for purposes for which appropriated funds are not available.
- To advise the college in planning and maintaining a properly balanced ‘in-service’ educational program.
From C. Aubrey Smith’s Fifty Years of Education for Business at The University of Texas.
1961
The CBA institutes the Business Honors curriculum, a program of accelerated study for the best and the brightest undergraduates.
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1962
In January, the College of Business Administration moves into the Business/Economics Building.
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The building houses the first escalator on campus and comes with a $4,109,000 price tag. It is the largest classroom structure on campus.
1964
The Graduate School of Business is established to administer masters’ programs in accounting and business administration and to confer graduate degrees apart from the College of Business Administration. The new program is patterned after the highly successful Harvard MBA program.
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1966
Dr. George Kozmetsky is named Dean. Kozmetsky is co-founder and ex-vice president of Teledyne, Inc. His agenda includes beefing up the research program, opening new channels between the School and the business community, and preparing students to manage the country’s new and evolving technology. International business models become a large part of the new programs.
1967
The first endowed professorship in the Business School is established with a $100,000 grant from Houston Endowment, Inc. Known as the Jesse H. Jones Professorship in the Graduate School of Business, the professorship honors the memory of the late Houston publisher and financier.
1968
Classes are mostly male, with 3,481 men to 485 women.
1970
The School experiences a significant increase in programs, courses, and student enrollments leading to higher student/faculty ratios which will remain a problem for the next decade. A shortage of appropriated funds leads to the establishment of the CBA Foundation to raise private funds for school development.
1972
After four years of intensive faculty effort to build a program that would produce graduates “with the ability and imagination to compete in a world of reality,” a new innovative MBA curriculum in the Graduate School of Business is adopted for implementation in fall of 1972.
1974
The College of Business Administration ranks 15th among the top 20 American schools of business and commerce, according to the Journal of Business.
The Journal of Accountancy lists UT’s accounting department as fourth in quality of its faculty and third in effectiveness of its graduate programs.
1975
With the presentation of a $6,000 check from the Texas Realtors Foundation, UT becomes the second school of higher learning in Texas to offer a degree in real estate and urban land development.
1976
The Graduate School of Business building is dedicated on March 26, 1976 to house the now separate MBA program. The rhomboid-shaped building (so constructed in order to leave a grove of trees on the north side standing) is one of the most advanced buildings of its kind, featuring extensive multi-media, audio-visual and computer resources for teaching and research.
On the north side of the new GSB building, under a tree in an undisturbed grove is the unmarked grave of Pig Bellmont, the dog that was the unofficial campus mascot from 1914 until 1923.
1977
George Kozmetsky founds the Institute for Constructive Capitalism, or IC2.
Marketing News names the UT Marketing Administration department 14th among the top 20 in the nation (placing one better than Harvard).
1979
The College of Business is re-designated the College and Graduate School of Business; and the Century Club, an alumni fundraising organization, meets for the first time. The required GPA for admission again rises to 2.5.
1982-83
William H. Cunningham becomes dean, and the University celebrates its Centennial.
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New York Stock Exchange Trading Post No. 5, which stood on the floor of the NYSE from 1929 to 1981, is procured by the College of Business Administration, thanks to a $37,000 fund-raising drive led by Edward Randall, III, then chairman of the Rotan Mosle Financial Corp. It is housed on the second floor of the CBA building in the Hall of Honors once the renovations to that building are complete.
The CBA Hall of Fame is created to honor former students, faculty and other dedicated supporters of the University.
1984
The Business School’s new catalog lists stiffer major requirements in an effort to curb growth that is still out-of-hand. Undergraduate enrollment is down to around 9,000, but it is still the largest business school in the country. Nevertheless, the School is rated fifth nationwide in quality and the accounting department is second.
1985
Dean Cunningham becomes President of the University and Robert E. Witt becomes Dean of the Business School.
The PPA (Professional Program in Accounting) is initiated, where students receive both the BBA and the MPA in five years of study.
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The one-of-a-kind Classroom 2000, a showcase for advanced management teaching, is constructed above the Hall of Honors. Thanks to a $2.7 million grant from IBM, professors in the classroom deliver state-of-the-art education to students in the Information Systems Management program.
1986
The undergraduate program ranks 6th nationally in the Gourman Report, 1st in the South and Southwest regions.
Internationalization of the curriculum takes several strides forward with the development of joint degree programs and faculty and student exchange programs.
The George Kozmetsky Center for Business Education, dedicated in 1986, includes a student computer lab with 275 personal computers. LAN is set up to link faculty/staff computers; computational power throughout the School is upgraded with a VAX cluster, and the additions of dozens of IBM and Macintosh computers for student use.
1990
The first Management of Information Science (MIS) students graduate from the School.
The Hispanic Business Student Association hosts its first annual Leadership Conference for students and companies nationwide. The HBSA goes on to win Most Outstanding Organization on Campus in 1990, 1992, 1995, and 2000.
1992
Admission standards are raised to further reduce overcrowding.
1994
The Business Foundations Program is a new course of study offered to non-business majors for the first time, allowing students to get the basics of a business education while pursuing another major.
The MBA Investment Fund, L.L.C., is created to become the first legally constituted, private investment company to be managed by students. The Fund is a limited liability company registered under the laws of the State of Texas. It is created to enable MBA students to obtain real-world experience in the process of managing investment portfolios and in developing relationships with clients. The fund completed its initial offering on December 8, 1994, with $1.6 million invested by accredited investors under securities laws. Since inception, the Fund has earned an average annual return of about 17.5 percent.
1995
The College of Business becomes the first undergraduate program at UT to require e-mail for all entering students.
Dean Witt leaves the School for a job as President of UT Arlington and Robert G. May becomes Dean ad interim until he is officially named Dean in June of 1996.
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1996
The EDS Financial Trading & Technology Center opens on the third floor of the GSB. The three-room complex consists of a state-of-the-art multi-media classroom, a trading room where graduate finance students run the Fund, and a computer showroom where the latest technology is on display. The goal of the Center is to help students better understand the growing flow of financial data that affects markets and to enable them to participate in the development of new applications of information technology to finance.
1997
The College of Business celebrates its 75th anniversary.
The CBA opens a new computer facility on the first floor equipped with 39 Dell Dimension P133 workstations.
The Century Club is disbanded in favor of a more narrowly defined group of three organizations to serve specific populations in the School: the Texas Business Network (undergraduate alumni), the McCombs MBA Alumni Network (graduate alumni), and the Texas Business Legacy Fund (the fundraising arm).
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Construction begins on new Ford Career Center facilities within the building. The Business School’s small interview rooms are being completely revamped and moved to a larger space on the 4th floor to provide a more professional environment with a recruiter services area. With a gift from Ford Motor Company, the completed 10,290 square-foot facility will be named the Ford Career Center.
1998
Responding to the rapid changes taking place in the energy industry, including the development of a deregulated, competitive electricity market, UT Austin and Enron team up to launch the nation’s first Energy Finance program, which will enable MBA students to learn innovative ways in which commodities such as electricity and natural gas can be traded, much like equity stocks.
The Business School requires incoming graduate students to have high-performance laptop computers. The School sets ambitious standards in an effort to integrate laptops into the educational process and keep pace with the needs of the business sector.
1999
The Entrepreneur Society hosts its first Idea Generation Conference. The conference brings together local entrepreneurs, industry representatives, and the University community to exchange ideas about building a stronger entrepreneurial network in Austin.
Cisco Systems, Inc., and the Graduate School of Business publishes the first data in a new series of Internet Economy indicators, designed to monitor and broadcast information on the Internet economy. The results emanate from UT's Center for Research in Electronic Commerce, under the direction of Professor Andrew Whinston, one of the country's most respected researchers in e-commerce.
2000
Bolstering the University's commitment to the “new Texas economy,” UT President Larry Faulkner announces the establishment of the
Texas Evening MBA Program (TEMBA) in the Graduate School of Business. Keeping pace with Austin's growing business community, TEMBA increases the city's attractiveness to its citizens and to companies looking for alternative top-quality educational opportunities for their employees.
The University of Texas' MBA Program in Entrepreneurship was awarded the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship's (USASBE) Year 2000 National Model Entrepreneurship Program Award.
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In the largest single donation in the 117-year history of The University of Texas at Austin, San Antonio businessman Red McCombs gives a $50 million cash gift to the Business School. To honor McCombs for his extraordinary gift, the UT System Board of Regents has authorized the renaming of the UT Austin College of Business Administration and Graduate School of Business as the Red McCombs School of Business.
The McCombs School of Business opens the Reliant Productivity Center. The productivity center is a student workroom with 246 seats, each of which is wired with 100Mb Ethernet and power outlets for laptop computers.
A gift from Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst Inc., creates one of the country’s first academic centers for the study of private equity investing. The Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst Center for Private Equity Finance.
2001
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The School celebrates the opening of the Frito-Lay Student Leadership Center located in the Atrium on the 3rd floor. The Center is home to official business student organizations and incorporates office space, a conference room, new office equipment, and reception areas for graduates and undergraduates.
A gift from alumni, Gary Crum and Bob Graham, and 63 employees in their AIM Management Group establishes endowments supporting finance education programs and a new academic center for the study of investment. The new AIM Investment Center will support research in investment management, capital markets, and other areas of finance.
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2002
In June, the school appointed the ninth dean in its history, George W. Gau, an accomplished former chair of the Department of Finance who was credited with spearheading a series of innovative collaborations with industry. Dean Gau immediately set to work on a series of initiatives, hearing student concerns, launching a new strategic planning process, and implementing the first-ever outside reviews of the school's academic programs. Gau also established a new goal for McCombs of becoming the best public business school in the nation.
2006
Construction began on the new Executive Education and
Conference Center, a world-class residential learning
environment offering professionals and students ready access to
the thought leaders of the McCombs School of Business.
Positioned just two blocks from the school, the center is
destined to become the new gateway to the university, and will
host all of the executive education programs for the school,
including the executive and evening MBA programs. The center is
scheduled to open in 2008.
For information on specific programs at the McCombs School, consult our contacts page. For media information, contact the Communications Director by phone at 512-471-3314 or by email at CommunicationsDirector@mccombs.utexas.edu.
