History


Our Proud

	History

		Of Achievement


	Fordham was founded in the Jesuit tradition—on a committment to values-based education, quality teaching and dedication to the needs of our students. It is truly inspiring to look back on our past and sense the wisdom of this approach.



The New York Stock Exchange. For many, Wall Street is where modern business began.

The Fordham Graduate School of Business graduated its first class in 1971—the same year President Nixon announced the U.S. would no longer use the gold standard, the Environmental Protection Agency began operations and the Supreme Court ordered an end to hiring discrimination in its landmark Griggs v. Duke Power Co. ruling. Two years previously, the Fordham Graduate School of Business had been established through the leadership of Dr. Louis Spadaro, the school's first dean.

The new program held its first class is in the Lowenstein Center, a high-rise structure adjacent to Lincoln Center that from the beginning served as a symbol of Fordham’s commitment to the educational needs of New York.

Father Lawrence J. McGinley, president of Fordham University in 1969, said in a New York Herald Tribune article that the strategic move to establish several professional schools— including the Graduate School of Business—in the middle of Manhattan would "offer unparalleled opportunities" to students because of "the stimulating and varied intellectual climate to be found in a great urban center."

Father McGinley was right. Response to the new business school from students and employers in and around New York was "genuinely enthusiastic," Dean Spadaro said of the new venture at the time. More than 250 men and women enrolled in the program's first classes, held mostly at night.

Under Dean Spadaro the Fordham MBA Program flourished. Over the next decade, the program's enrollment more than quadrupled to nearly 1,200 students. Management development programs, seminars, a lecture series and other services to the business community were implemented. The Lincoln Center program also expanded its geographic reach by offering its business courses in nearby Tarrytown, New York.

Building on the institution’s early progress, the school's second dean, Benedict T. Harter, J. D., assumed leadership of the Graduate and Undergraduate Schools of Business in 1979. His declared goal was to achieve greater stature and visibility for the school and attract even higher quality students.

A variety of dignintaries broke ground for the Lowenstein Center in October, 1965. Upon completion in 1969, the building became the first home of the Fordham Graduate School of Business.

(L) Rev. Leo J. McLaughlin, S.J., Former Fordham President

(M) New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller

(R) Rev. Vincent T. O’Keefe, S.J., Former Fordham President

Fordham GSB Achieves Accreditation.

In 1979 the school had a total of 40 faculty, teaching and researching the disciplines of accounting, finance, marketing, management and quantitative methods. Within a year, Dean Harter launched a two-year self-study process intended to lead to formal accreditation of the program by the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB).

Dean Harter reached his ambitious goal. In 1982, the Fordham Graduate School of Business received AACSB accreditationa critical milestone that symbolize the school's "arrival" among the nation's quality business schools. The period that followed was one of enrollment growth, expansion of academic program offerings and great strides as an institution.

In 1985, Arthur Taylor became the third Dean in the history of the Fordham Graduate School of Business. By then, the school had begun to develop the first of many international links, establishing the Fordham MBA Program for International Executives at the Irish Management Institute. Also symbolic of the school's anticipation of the rapidly changing paradigms of modern business, a major focus on information management and communications systems was incorporated into the school's curriculum.


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	Westerbeck Communications. Last modified: 07/10/98. ©1997 Fordham University. All rights reserved.