Schools

Roberto C. Goizueta Business School

In a sentence worthy of Woodrow Wilson, who as president of Princeton University had coined the phrase "Princeton in the Nation's Service," the dean of Emory College in February 1919, Howard Odum, recommended to the Board of Trustees that they create a "school of economics and business administration" as part of the new university in Druid Hills. The point was to serve the common good.

Public service to city, county, state, and national governments; training for business methods in the operation of community industry, both private and public; training for social efficiency alongside financial development—these constitute one of the obligations of the University to its constituency. 

So, in the fall of that year, Dr. E. H. Johnson (1891C) launched the new school from the Law Building (now Carlos Hall), working closely with Emory College to offer courses in economics, accounting, and business law as part of the requirements for the first two years of the curriculum. The first bachelor of business administration degrees were conferred in 1926.

The war years treated the business school unkindly. Dean Johnson retired from the deanship in 1940, and after a couple of interim deans, the school merged with Emory College for the duration of the war. In 1946, however, George S. Craft (1930C), who had studied at Harvard Business School after graduating from Emory, was tapped to reorganize the business school at Emory. With a generous gift from Walter H. Rich, president of the Rich Foundation in Atlanta, a new building was erected in memory of the three brothers who had founded Rich's Department Store in 1867, and the Rich Memorial Building opened in October 1947. The new curriculum required students to complete two years of Emory College before transferring to the BBA curriculum in the business school. Having put the school on solid footing, Dean Craft left in 1948 to become senior vice president of the Trust Company of Georgia but would continue to serve Emory as a trustee.

Meanwhile, plans were underway to offer graduate study leading to the M.B.A. degree. The new program was launched in the fall of 1954. With a grant from the Kellogg Foundation, the school briefly offered a specialized M.B.A. degree for hospital administrators as well. When the American Association of Collegiate Schools of Business accredited its first group of master's programs in 1961, Emory's M.B.A. program was on the list.

Impelled to seek admission to the company of the country's leading business schools, the business school in the 1980s began enlarging its research agenda and expanding its graduate program. Within a few years the quarters in the Rich Building seemed to have shrunk, and the school began raising funds to build a new home. With a major gift from the Woodruff Foundation in honor of Roberto C. Goizueta, chairman and CEO of The Coca-Cola Company, as well as a major endowment from Mr. Goizueta himself, the school was able to move into its spacious and handsome new home on Clifton Road in September 1997, just one month before Mr. Goizueta's death.

Since then, the school has nearly doubled its space with construction of the Goizueta Foundation Center for Research and Doctoral Education, dedicated in September 2005.

Source:  Hauk, Gary S.  A Legacy of Heart and Mind:  Emory Since 1836.