Twelve boxes (Boxes 1-12); 12 linear feet , 1947-2000

The Graduate School of Industrial Administration was founded in 1949 with a $5 million endowment grant from William Larimer Mellon. It’s purpose was to build on the technical skills of individuals in management positions by providing the communication and analytical decision-making skills the they needed to be successful in business. In this way, the GSIA was the first school in the county to adopt the particular approach of training scientists and engineers for executive positions using interdisciplinary courses in managerial economics, communication, behavioral science, quantitative research methods, and mathematics.

As soon as the school was founded, George Leland Bach, William Cooper, and Herbert Simon began working on a faculty and curriculum that would prepare its students for top management positions. They arranged a roundtable discussion with top business executives to articulate the administrative needs of modern businesses. This meeting began a continuous business-academic relationship in which each partner could benefit. The discussion also yielded that businesses were not interested in detailed technical skills for their upper management, but communication skills, ingenuity, analytical thinking, responsibility, and good human relations. These qualities have remained the emphasis of the School throughout the years.

The first academic year (1949-1950) began at GSIA with six carefully chosen students- all recent graduates of Carnegie Institute of Technology- and seven faculty members. George Bach, head of the Economics Department, was appointed Dean of the School. Many of the GSIA faculty held joint appointments with the Economics or Humanities and Social Science Departments. Students from outside the Carnegie Institute of Technology were admitted for the second year, bringing the total to 18 students. The first Ph.D. program was also started in the 1950-1951 academic year, with four students studying Mathematical and Industrial Economics. The third academic year began with the formal dedication of the completed GSIA building, now called Posner Hall.

The curriculum continued to evolve and in the late 1950s, Richard Cyert and other faculty developed an innovative business game to simulate management of a large business for students. By 1965, this game had become part of the GSIA curriculum and had been distributed to other schools through book publication. Cyert became the Dean of the School in 1961, and it continued to grow actively through the addition of grants, research contracts, and increasing enrollment. A major addition to the physical space of the School was completed in 1979 and 3 year, part-time masters program called ‘Flex-time’ was introduced in 1985. By 1996, this program was 100% company sponsored and configured as a distance-learning degree. As the number of successful alumni increased, the School saw numerous centers and scholarship funds established.

Since that first roundtable discussion in 1952, the school has worked to remain close with the international business community. Most significantly, the Business Advisory Council (now the Business Board of Advisors) was formed in 1952. This council consists of top executives from large corporations that agree to provide economic and curriculum advice to the School. The School also provides classes, conferences, and seminars for working executives. In 1954, the school held the first of what proved to be a very successful intensive course called the ‘Program for Executives.’ This program was designed for experienced upper-level managers to keep informed of new technologies and practices as well as strengthen their general managerial skills such as leadership, analytical decision-making, and coordination of departments.

Research has also been a major component of the curriculum since the School’s founding. World War II had created a new field in ‘operations research’ in which quantitative tools were being developed to assist managers in all areas of decision-making. The two areas in which the GSIA initially focused their research were organizational behavior and quantitative management. For faculty, research activities were accorded equal importance as teaching responsibilities and interdisciplinary research was encouraged. In the first year of its founding, the school won a research contract with the United States Air Force for “Intra-Firm Planning and Control” research. With William Cooper as the coordinator, this research later produced linear programming for business applications. By 1952, the school had won a second research contract with the Office of Naval Research for “Planning and Control of Industrial Operations.” This contract continued for many years and yielded many helpful tools for business. In 1955 the first computer at Carnegie Institute of Technology was installed in the GSIA basement, opening a new field of research in business applications of computer science. William Cooper would use the computer and mathematics to develop linear programming for business management, and Herbert Simon and Allen Newell would act as partners using computers to analyze human problem solving methods.

On March 19, 2004 the Graduate School of Industrial Administration was changed to the David A. Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon thanks to a $55 million donation from alumni David Tepper and his wife. Tepper (MBA ’82) is the president and founder of Appaloosa Management, a $3 billion hedge fund investment firm based in Chatham, N.J. The press announcement mentioned the schools continued emphasis on analytical decision-making skills and ground-breaking research. In its 57-year history, the school has produced six Nobel Prize winners in Economics:

• Robert Lucas for research in rational expectations theory and its implications for government macroeconomic and regulatory policies;
• Merton Miller for contributions to corporate finance;
• Franco Modigliani for his life-cycle theory of consumer savings;
• Herbert Simon for his idea of bounded rationality in economics and the importance of human behavior in understanding large industrial economies;
• Edward Prescott and Finn Kydland for their research in dynamic macroeconomics.

The Graduate School of Industrial Administration Records are housed in twelve archival boxes and are arranged in seven series. Series have been designated for annual reports, administrative records, Benjamin F. Fairless lectures, books, Cyert papers, publications, and research papers. These records include annual reports, correspondence, pamphlets and brochures, staff and student directories, School publications, research articles, theses, and course materials. Most series cover an extensive period of the School’s history to a varying degree of detail. For example, the annual reports or publications series provide a broad overview of the program at any year, whereas the Cyert Papers provide a more in-depth view of the workings of the school throughout the 1960s. The collection presents a reasonably complete representation of the GSIA- its faculty, students, courses, programs, research, and administration.

These materials were received in two accessions from the GSIA (1982,1989)

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Cassandra Pyle