UPDATED: Sept. 19, 2019 at 10:02 a.m.

Dean Eugene Anderson stood at the podium, looked down at his notes and checked his watch early Monday morning. It was seven minutes before he was to speak.

On the wall next to Anderson hung signs promising integrity, inclusion, collaboration, innovation and excellence —five core values established to guide the Martin J. Whitman School of Management’s future. On the opposite wall was a list of corporate donors who have funded the school’s growth.

Anderson, entering his third year as dean, shared his vision for Whitman’s future with students and faculty members at the “Whitman 100” ceremony Monday morning.

A century ago that morning, Whitman’s past began when an English professor founded Syracuse University’s School of Business Administration. It was a part of the first-wave of management schools, established in a then-bustling manufacturing city.

Dean Eugene Anderson talks on Monday morning, moments after he spoke to commemorate Whitman’s 100th anniversary. Gabe Stern | Asst. News Editor

Since then, enrollment rises and declines, corporate ties and alumni relations have defined the school, current and former administrators and faculty said. Over the past 100 years, a post-war influx of students, probation period and time of recovery forced the school to expand, adapt and evolve.

Anderson took five months to develop the “Roadmap to Whitman’s Second Century.” The school has set nine goals to transform its national presence. 

Several of them, like a Whitman NYC program, plans to enhance connections to bigger cities. Others, like “Whitman 2.0,” brace for another wave of enrollment growth by expanding its physical structure.

Eva Suppa | Digital Design Editor

These are priorities that have also shaped the school’s past.

Several times, corporate connections paved the way to adapt Whitman’s curriculum to meet the needs of larger corporations. It allowed them to move buildings twice. Manufacturing plants from Carrier Corporation, General Electric and Crouse-Hinds once made Syracuse a thriving city that the school took advantage of. When many of these companies moved to bigger cities, so did Whitman’s alumni base and curriculum focus.

“It was all driven by corporate America,” said Melvin Stith, dean of Whitman from 2005 to 2013, of what drove the school’s transformation.

Administrators have used meetings with alumni across the country in conferences, advisory boards and meetings to shape the curriculum and prepare students for corporate jobs, Stith added. Most of these are in larger cities across the east coast.

It’s similar today. Anderson spent his first weeks as dean traveling to see alumni committees across the country before students set foot on campus.

It was these decisions that have created a connection between Whitman and corporate hubs of the Northeast rather than Syracuse itself. But it was also these decisions that have driven the school to how faculty, deans and administrators see it now. A school that is “student-centered” with alumni who bring a “family brand.”

Anderson stood on stage Monday morning and tried to encapsulate that. He planned his speech the week before. About 100 students, staff and faculty members stood to the side as he began.

“I want to welcome you all to this celebration,” Anderson said. “Whitman’s 100th anniversary.”

Dean Eugene Anderson speaks at the “Whitman 100” ceremony. Gabe Stern | Asst. News Editor

***

For its first 65 years, the School of Business Administration adapted with the city. It expanded its faculty as manufacturing companies trickled into Syracuse after World War II. It offered night classes for students working downtown and launched a doctoral program in 1965.

Through that stretch, one thing stayed the same: the school’s resources were scattered across campus. Slocum Hall, Sims Hall and several other buildings served as the school’s homes.

Clint Tankersley was hired as an associate professor in the management school in 1974. His first office was in a converted bedroom of an old fraternity house.

His first year at SU, Tankersley had colleagues scattered across campus, in buildings that former Dean William Jerome called “archaic structures” decades later in 1994. Tankersley would go on to hold several roles, including the position of senior associate dean.

As the school’s population grew — a trend that first began after WWII — so did its corporate endowments. Applications for admission grew by 18% from 1978 to 1979, according to the school’s annual report from 1980.

That year, administrators began to plan. They needed a singular building to fit the school’s growing population, and they needed the money to pay for it.

In 1983, Crouse-Hinds Hall opened as a $6 million building meant to consolidate the school’s resources into one building. Corporate partners funded nearly the entire building, a fact that the school boasted to undergraduate students and program reports. In its 1984-85 guide, the school told undergraduates that those partners were one of their “richest resources.”

“Through the years, the school has forged a relationship so strong with local businesses our students are actively courted for internships and even employment,” an excerpt from the 1984-85 guide reads.

But soon, those companies moved elsewhere, and management alumni soon followed.

***

Anderson moved from Miami to Syracuse in 2017 because he saw Whitman was at a turning point.

Chancellor Kent Syverud, entering his third year as chancellor, had begun to roll out his Fast Forward Syracuse initiative, intended to drive SU’s academic and physical growth moving forward. Millions of dollars will transform Whitman’s physical structure, focus and initiatives.

“Look at what you can possibly do here” was the message pitched to Anderson while he applied for the job. Ultimately, he took the job because of Whitman’s most recent turning point — a trajectory that few schools had, he said. 

Eva Suppa | Digital Design Editor

Growth and change were nothing new to the school. Opportunities in the private sector, once centered in Syracuse, defined the school for decades.At the end of the 1980s, however, most manufacturing jobs and corporate partners that the management school relied on began to leave for larger cities — many of the same ones that funded Crouse-Hinds Hall.

“Local companies got bought up by national concerns,” said Stith, and Whitman’s curriculum went national, too. The school launched its 22-month Executive MBA in 1985, allowing managers to have residencies in New York City, according to SU archives.

What came next was a flurry of programs: a campus in Corning, New York, Robert H. Brethen Operations Management Institute and a Management Scholars program. Around the same time, Whitman established a part-time program — faculty were overwhelmed.

The school’s resources were spread thin. Undergraduate and graduate programs only had assistant deans. As a result, an accreditation organization put the school on probation, meaning its accreditation was at risk. Local media outlets found out and had a “field day,” said Peter Koveos, interim dean at the time. He now acts as the school’s finance department chair.

School administrators dug themselves out of that hole through alumni connections, Koveos said. Advisory boards lobbied SU to spread more resources to the management school. The solution worked, but not without a change to the school’s landscape.

It became more global and entrepreneurship-based heading into the 21st century. The school no longer looked to neighboring companies for most of its jobs. Its leaders looked for donors and alumni, ones scattered around the Northeast — New York City, Philadelphia, Boston and Washington D.C.

“There was a lot of opportunities then for students to stay in Syracuse for that initial job,” Stith said of his time as a graduate student in the 1970s. “But that environment changed and started looking globally.”

***

In 2003, the school was running out of space and needed to expand. Administrators planned for a new building that would cost $39 million. As in the past, they turned to their large alumni base. That year, SU renamed the management school after Martin Whitman, an SU alumnus and who co-founded the investment firm Third Avenue Management.

The new building, located at 721 University Ave., cost a total of $39 million. Whitman was a benefactor of the project, but the amount of his donation was never disclosed.

Despite the new building, and now the new millennium, many of the problems that Whitman faces today echo what those of decades prior. Anderson has hired 15 new faculty members since his arrival to keep up with growing enrollment numbers. The school is once again running out of room.

Other concerns are new.

The world is becoming more digitized, requiring an emphasis on business analytics. Administrators want to collaborate more with other colleges across SU as professions become more interdisciplinary, Anderson said.

Koveos said he expects the relationship between faculty and students and the outside world to stay the same.

“Of course, with technology and a lot of other factors that come in, so who knows the university of tomorrow, ten years from now,” he said.

CLARIFICATION: In a previous version of this post, the timeline of the development of the “Roadmap to Whitman’s Second Century,” was unclear. It took five months to complete the plan.

Published on September 19, 2019 at 1:16 am

Contact Gabe: gkstern@syr.edu | @gabestern326