Dean Harlow Person served in the deanship of Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Administration and Finance from 1906 to 1919 (Khurana, R., From Higher Aims to Hired Hands, Princeton University Press, 2007, p. 152). Person was also influential in the establishment of the AACSB.
Person was clear in articulating a mission for his school. Following are several quotes from Person about the Tuck School’s mission and vision.
Our judgment is that our primary obligation is to the student, and the first and largest draft which the instructor should make on his store of time and energy should be on behalf of the individual student. We attempt to develop in our instructing staff the feeling that instruction is not something formal but is a personal responsibility for the personal success of every individual student. That, we conceive, as also our largest public service.
Person argued:
The essential public service that the school could provide was to teach students to ‘develop the power to apply principles to the solutions of business problems …. which will some day be of service to us all.’
In regard to the teaching of ethics, Person stated
We do not attempt any formal instruction in business ethics. We believe that formality and artificiality of a formal course in business ethics would defeat its very purpose. But in every course it is the aim of every instructor, I know, to inspire in his students a conception of the nobility of the profession of the business man and of his responsibility to his fellow-man and to society.
Finally, in order to assist young men in the pursuit of a career
Every possible method is employed to enable students to meet business men -(guest) lecturers – personally, and the lectures of such men are followed by a simple luncheon intended to enable second-year men to meet lecturers informally.
The ideals espoused by Person are as relevant today as ever. Have many of the “top” business faculty strayed from this ideal?
– from the pen of Dr. Percy Trappe
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