The Starship Enterprise Lands On Yale’s Campus

William Beinecke, an early advocate for the business school, stole the show at the opening of Evans Hall

William Beinecke, an early advocate for the business school, stole the show at the opening of Evans Hall

A 99-YEAR-OLD STEALS THE SHOW AT THE OPENING

“When I was invited to speak here,” Beinecke quipped from his wheelchair, “I questioned the wisdom of the organizers of this event. I am four months away from turning 100. As a general rule when someone who is 90 is asked to speak, he doesn’t know what to say. When someone who is 99 is asked to speak he doesn’t know when to stop.”

Beinecke, who graduated from Yale University in 1936, traced the early history of the business school. It was in the mid-1950s when Beinecke was working as general counsel and vice president of S&H Green Stamps, that he began to press for a B-school at Yale with what he called “a large number of Yale alums.”  “It was a conviction that grew out of our personal experiences, he told the crowd. “We had seen the swift evolution of U.S. business and industry following World War II. We knew that business and the capitalist system were significant forces in American life. We believed that it was important for Yale to have a school of management, not just to compete with its rivals but to fulfill the university’s responsibilities as a national institution.”

It would take many years before the School of Management would open its doors in 1976 and graduate its first class two years later. As Beinecke put it, “The late 1960s and early 1970s was not an easy time to set up a new school of management. Many critics saw the proposal as proof that Yale had become the lackey of Corporate America.” So when Yale finally gained approval to move forward, the schools was known as the School of Organization and Management, rather than a business school. Its graduates would earn a Master of Public and Private Management. “Nothing so common as an MBA,” smiled Beinecke, whose own grandson graduated from SOM with an MBA in 2010.

‘WATCHING THE GLORIOUS DEVELOPMENT FROM WHEREVER I HAPPEN TO BE’

The project to create SOM’s new home was hatched at the worst possible time—in 2008 as markets plunged and the economy collapsed. But it was viewed as a vital component of a strategy to bring the school greater recognition and global stature. Many peer schools had built or were planning new mammoth homes, from Stanford to MIT Sloan, and Yale was far behind. Then Dean Sharon Oster famously put it this way to a reporter: “You can’t be in a dump if everyone else is in a spectacular building.”

Despite the economic implosion, Yale was able to raise $110 million from alumni and friends by the fall of 2010—a remarkable feat. It was in December of that year when “Ned” Evans, a 1964 Yale grad who had been chairman and CEO of book publisher Macmillan Inc. from 1979 to 1989, stepped forward with the largest gift in SOM’s history. Just weeks after the announcement of his $50 million gift, Evans sadly died from acute myeloid leukemia. The cost of the school, originally projected at $180 million, would eventually balloon to a total cost of $243 million.

Edward P. Evans Hall, designed by architects Foster + Partners, will ultimately change the culture of the school. As it expanded and scattered along Hillhouse Ave. in different buildings over the years, something was lost, noted Oster, who played a crucial role in getting the new building as the predecessor to Snyder. “The sense of us as a tight-knit community of scholars began to dissipate, and we became more compartmentalized and separated as scholars.”

No more. Every student, every faculty member, and every staffer will now be housed in the new building. What happens there over the next few decades, of course, will be far more important than the building itself. As Beinecke concluded, to chuckles in the audience, “I will be watching the glorious development from wherever I happen to be.”

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(An iPhone’s view of the new Yale School of Management at Evans Hall follows)

The Beckenstein Atrium. Photo by Tony Rinaldo

The Beckenstein Atrium. Photo by Tony Rinaldo

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