I REMEMBER WHEN
A Dean Remembered
By Stanley C. Hollander, Professor Emeritus of Marketing
Alfred Seelye was dean of the College of Business from 1958-1968. In early 2001, Al passed away. This message is a tribute to his career at Michigan State and recognition of his role in the success of the College of Business.
I came to know Al Seelye while visiting East Lansing in the summer of 1957 to discuss a job offer, and I met him only a few times after he left Michigan State. So this note will not discuss the many successes he achieved before and after his tenure at the College of Business. His accomplishments at Michigan State alone would add up to a satisfying career for any person.
Al lived life with a great deal of gusto. He enjoyed the company of his faculty. When the Business School was headquartered in Marshall Hall on the north campus, he often walked across Grand River Avenue to have coffee with faculty members in the middle of the afternoon. When the college moved to Eppley Center on the south campus, he made certain that the building contained a coffee lounge, available to the faculty and adjacent to his office.
He did not devote much time to personal scholarship while in the Dean's Office. He forgot about personal bibliography and treated the deanship as a full-time occupation that demanded 100 percent or more devotion. The distinguishing characteristic of his deanship was an intense drive to upgrade the academic standards of Michigan State's business programs.
He assiduously recruited faculty whom he felt would impress the academic community and would lead students into the new and burgeoning areas of business thought. He wanted people who were going to publish in the important journals. Some had an established reputation, some were young people of great promise. He attracted them with generous salaries and with other forms of support.
In one way he pursued a unique, almost counter-intuitive course. He sought not only the journal writers, but also textbook authors. This was somewhat unique because textbook writing was not a highly venerated academic pursuit. But Al often expressed the thought that if students went through undergraduate business school and used texts authored by Michigan State faculty in all of their business courses, those students would apply for admission to Michigan State's graduate program. Al resolved the conflict between student and academic appraisal of textbook output by seeking the people who were writing the most innovative and authoritative books. The academy's most rarified and intellectual institutions, or the places that fancy themselves in that category, may not have been carried away but the schools that formed Michigan State's natural market were impressed.
Al then did much to facilitate increased scholarly output from the older and newly recruited faculty. He reduced teaching loads from four courses per week to three and then two, thus matching the practice of major leading business schools. Michigan State at that time was on the quarter system. Productive faculty could apply for, and would receive, a dean's one-quarter research assignment every alternate year. Although committee and administrative requirements continued during this period, the faculty member was relieved of all teaching duties for the period.
Another major facilitating step was a very substantial expansion of the college's Bureau of Business and Economic Research. Previously, a struggling part-time venture for one or two faculty with a limited clerical staff, the Bureau was suddenly supplied with a full-time director, additional part-time faculty staffing, professional editors and more clerical help. Its refurbished publication list included MSU Business Topics, a competitive general managerially oriented quarterly, Michigan Economic Record and the Michigan Economic Almanac.
Al's recruitment efforts were directed not only at faculty, but also at potential doctoral students. He made many campus visits within the United States and in Asia and often returned with doctoral candidates in tow. He aimed, in part, to place a large cadre of MSU alumni, and thus MSU advocates, in business faculties throughout the country and the world. At one time, Michigan State graduated more business doctorates than any other school in the United States.
An important part of the recruitment effort was the institution of the Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) program in 1956. As a matter of educational philosophy the DBA, following a Harvard Business School example, was intended to provide a broad based general business managerial education in contrast to the more narrowly focused specialization of the typical business PhD In practice, the new degree differed in only one important respect from the traditional PhD -reading knowledge of two foreign languages as a PhD requirement. Some schools were beginning to allow the substitution of mathematics and/or statistics for one such language. Although these requirements were often very low hurdles, potential business doctoral students absolutely dreaded them. I can remember my own frantic searches and those of my colleagues for some means of escape from this seemingly alien and horrible barrier. The DBA offered an attractive way out for many students. Ultimately those who would receive the degree were allowed to convert it retroactively to the PhD
Subsequently, Al moved the school further toward concentration on business and economics. In a major campus academic reorganization, the College of Business and Public Service became the College of Business Administration. A variety of non-business departments, such as Landscape Architecture and Criminal Justice, were reassigned to more appropriate administrative venues.
Al did not win all of his academic battles. He was not able to wrest as much control and coordination over the core curriculum from the fiefdoms of the department chairs. Nevertheless, he placed his mark on the college in ways that opened it up to substantial growth during and long past his administration.
Do you have an event or memory of your time at the college of business you'd like to share? Perhaps a student event, grueling class, or a professor that made a difference in your life or career. Contact the editor at (517) 432-9176.