Business and Public Administration, College of

The College of Business and Public Administration of the University of Maryland at College Park was first established as the School of Commerce in 1921. Leslie W. Baker, a certified public accountant, proposed opening the school at an alumni dinner in Baltimore during the school year 1920-21 in honor of President Woods, when he found that the University of Maryland did not offer accounting and business courses. Stimulated by Maynard A. Clemens, a director at the Baltimore Y.M. C. A. and later director of the school, and supported by President Woods, Baker's idea came to fruition on September 28, 1921. The new school had a vigorous start with a total of 394 students enrolled in the first year and an additional 42 registered in the summer school of 1922. Growth continued through the 1920s, stimulated by the rapid expansion of business following World War I. Standards needed to be established, a broad curricula of courses designed, and a sound organization formed to meet the needs of the developing American society. In the spring of 1923, the school expanded to become the College of Commerce and Business Administration. This reorientation of emphasis is evident in the college's mission statement, published in the 1924-25 catalog: "The chief aim of the College of Commerce and Business Administration was to produce thinkers rather than routine workers, executives rather than subordinates. The studies combined the highly specialized and technical, such as accounting, mathematics, statistics, insurance, law and economics with the liberal, such as English, history, foreign languates, psychology, sociology and government." These ambitious goals were to be implemented by a college faculty which numbered 46 during that academic year.

The following school year was relatively unstable. The appointment of Herbert M. Diamond as dean of the proposed new School of Business Administration by Frederick E. Lee, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, led to the resignation of Maynard A. Clemens and a number of the faculty who then organized the University of Baltimore. In the spring of 1926, a number of factors, among them the lack of quality facilities, resulted in the closure of the School of Business Administration as a separate unit in the university organization. Students enrolled in the program transferred to the Johns Hopkins University, the University of Baltimore or the Baltimore Y.M. C. A. school. In the following years, the business administration curriculum was re-established in the College of Arts and Sciences, as part of the Department of Economics and Business Administration, and contineud to change and expand. In the fall of 1938, this department became the College of Commerce and W. Mackenzie Stevens was named as dean.

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