Atkinson Graduate School of Management - History

History

Atkinson Graduate School was founded at Willamette University in 1974 and moved into the new Seeley G. Mudd Building in 1975. The first year had 52 students and five professors, and the program is older than the management program at Yale University. Stephen Archer served as the school's first dean. The school was first named as the Willamette University School of Administration before being renamed as the George H. Atkinson Graduate School of Management. Atkinson was a businessman in the construction industry and a trustee of Willamette before he died in 1978. He served as president of the board of trustees and made the largest single donation in school history up to that time in 1969 when his foundation gave $3.4 million to the university.

In 1978, the Center for Business-Government Studies was added to the school after Willamette received a grant from the M. J. Murdock Charitable Trust. The program was designed to better the relationships between the government and businesses. In 1988, the school was recognized by U.S. News & World Report and the fifth best business school in the Midwest and West region. It was the highest ranked of any school in the Pacific Northwest. Enrollment was 130 students with 10 full-time professors. At that time the program was led by Dean David L. Puryear with a tuition of just over $8,000 per year.

In 1990, the school hired G. Dale Weight to serve as dean, the same year he was removed as chief executive officer of the Benj. Franklin Savings and Loan after the thrift was seized by the government during the Savings and loan crisis. Weight remained dean until 1998. At that time Atkinson GSM had 184 students and 11 full-time faculty members. Tuition was $14,900 per year then and incoming students scored an average of 550 on the Graduate Management Admission Test. From 1998 to 2002, Atkinson was led by Dean Bryan Johnston. Johnston had been the interim president at Willamette and a member of the Oregon House of Representatives.

Atkinson opened a center to the north in Portland's Pearl District in August 2005 to provide a two-year MBA program in the Oregon's most populous city. In February 2007, the Jeld-Wen Foundation made a $2.5 million dollar donation to endow a free-enterprise professorship at the school, the largest donation ever for the graduate program. Dean Jim Goodrich, who joined Atkinson in 2003, retired from the school in June 2007, with Debra J. Ringold serving as interim dean. Previously the JELD-WEN Professor in Free Enterprise, Ringold was named as the permanent dean in January 2008. In 2007, the Center for Business Education ranked the school 58th in their Beyond Grey Pinstripes rankings for emphasizing social and environmental awareness in the business world. The school was admitted to the Graduate Management Admission Council in June 2009. As of 2009, the program had approximately 230 students, and was the largest full-time MBA program in Oregon. The program enrollment grew to 312 students as of 2011.

The Atkinson Graduate School of Management was ranked among Forbes magazine's "Best Business Schools" list in 2009 and 2011. It is the only ranked program on Forbes' 2011 list in Oregon. The MBA program was ranked as the third largest in the Portland area by the Portland Business Journal in 2012.