Tag: Olin100

It’s hard to imagine, but in 1992, there were no smart phones, no selfies, no LinkedIn. There wasn’t even a career center at Olin. The job market was tight and first year MBAs were scrambling to line up summer internships. Rising to meet the challenge, Olin’s Marketing Club held a brainstorming session. The result: they created a deck of cards, modeled after baseball cards, with a photo (selfie) on one side and their ‘stats’ on the other. They packaged the cards with a piece of bubble gum and mailed (snail mail) the cards to potential employers.

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Phil Donahue shows the Marketing All Stars baseball cards to his audience.

The clever marketing strategy worked! Students not only got job offers, they also attracted media attention from the likes of Fortune magazine and the very popular Phil Donahue TV talk show.

Thanks to Sandy Jurgenson for telling us about the Marketing Club’s campaign and suggesting we talk to Callaway Ludington Zuccarello, MBA’93, who was a leader of the club and media spokesperson for the group. You can see clips of Callaway on “Donahue” and sharing her fond memories of business school in the video above.

FORTUNE magThat’s Callaway’s baseball card in Fortune magazine at left. The story featured the baseball card marketing scheme and quotes Syl Stevenson, then-general manager of health foods at Pet, who hired one of the Olin students after receiving the cards, “If I’d gotten a stack of 33 resumes, I would have just scanned them. I read each of the trading cards.”

Callaway remembers that almost all  33 students in the Marketing Club received job offers as a result of the baseball cards attention-grabbers. She and a classmate got summer internships at Sara Lee in Chicago.

If anyone has a set of the baseball cards, please share them with us on social media #Olin100, we’d love to see them!


Washington University signed an agreement with the US government, launching a six-year collaboration with Korea University and Yonsei University to repair and modernize business education programs in South Korea that were gutted by war, languishing from a stagnant economy, and stalled in old-fashioned teaching practices.

From 1958 to 1964, the Korea Project sent Olin faculty on extended tours of duty in Seoul to counsel educators overseas, demonstrate new teaching styles, write new curricula, and rebuild business libraries at the two schools.

Meanwhile, dozens of South Korean business professors observed, studied, and earned business degrees in Washington University classrooms in St. Louis.

“The Korea Project is one of the great chapters in Olin’s history and one of the important ones in Washington University’s history,” said Bob Virgil, Olin Dean Emeritus, who served as a graduate student aid to the program’s leadership and still counts many of the Korean exchange students as longtime personal friends.

Bob Virgil talks about the Korea Project and its impact in video above.

Goals of the project

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Washu professors teaching in Seoul classroom.

Nobody credits the Korea Project for South Korea’s economic rise, but many agree on both sides of the Pacific that the intense concentration of academic resources helped push the nation’s business community in the right direction.

“It was a great contribution that Washington University made in Korea,” said Ja Song, who came to St. Louis to earn his MBA as part of the Korea Project’s effort to train overseas colleagues.

After graduating in 1961, Song served a mandatory 16-month tour in the Korean army, and returned to earn his doctorate in accounting. He taught for 10 years at the University of Connecticut, then returned to teach in Korea until 1992 when he began a four-year term as president of Yonsei University—the college that had recommended him for the Korea Project in the first place.

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Link to the entire story on the Korea Project by Kurt Greenbaum on the Olin100 website.

Share your Olin memories here.


John E. Simon, for whom Simon Hall is named, was a St. Louis investor and philanthropist. Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1896, Mr. Simon attended Smith Academy in St. Louis. After serving during World War I and graduating from Harvard University in 1918, Mr. Simon joined the firm of I.M. Simon & Company in St. Louis in 1919. Founded in 1874 by his great uncle, the firm is believed to have been the third oldest New York Stock Exchange member firm and the oldest continuous member firm west of the Mississippi River.

Mr. Simon became a partner in 1925 and guided the firm through the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the Depression, and World War II. The firm helped form and finance many national and local companies, including Delta Airlines, Litton Industries, and McDonnell Douglas Corp.

Simon directed the firm as General Partner for nearly 50 years and remained active in the firm as a Limited Partner for many years after that. Simon & Co. merged with R. Rowland & Co. in 1988, and the firm was acquired by Stifel Nicolaus & Co. in 1989.

Click on image above to watch the video of Dean Emeritus Bob Virgil talking about his friend John Simon.

John Simon with business school students in newly opened Simon Hall, 1987.

John Simon with business school students in newly opened Simon Hall, 1987.

In April 1984, a reception in honor of Mr. and Mrs. John E. Simon was held to announce the naming of the new business school building under construction. It would be named John E. Simon Hall thanks to their generous gift to support the school.

Link to complete profile of John E. Simon on the Olin100 website. centennial logo redFlag

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When Simon Hall was dedicated in April 1987, it was one of the largest academic buildings on the Danforth Campus with 80,000 square feet of usable floor space.




Our business school had a leader named Trump who became dean in 1954. Ross M. Trump came to WashU in 1949 from Tulane University, where he taught marketing. Trump was a native of Ohio and earned undergraduate, masters, and doctorate degrees from Ohio State University.

Dean Ross TrumpAccording to Washington University historian Ralph E. Morrow, Trump “was endowed with bulldog determination, canny judgment, and knew where he wanted to take his school”—which, as it turned out, was abroad.

We may take traveling abroad for granted in the 21st century, but in 1958, “international collaboration” was a new concept for the business school and the University. With financial help from the International Cooperation Agency (ICA), the predecessor to the Agency for International Development, the business school launched a cooperative program with Yonsei and Korea Universities in South Korea to re-establish and update management training in the aftermath of the Korean War.

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Business school classroom in South Korea

A contingent of WashU business professors moved their families to Korea during the project while Korean students and professors came to St. Louis to study. In 1960, another project funded by the ICA brought approximately 50 students from Tunisia to St. Louis for two years of study in business.

In addition to international collaboration, Dean Trump worked diligently to cultivate relations with the St. Louis business community, inviting leaders to teach and serve as guest speakers on campus.

Curriculum was also a top priority—both undergraduate and graduate. During Dean Trump’s tenure, the school’s two-year undergraduate curriculum was revamped while eliminating degrees in retailing and public administration. A national trend toward graduate degrees inspired Dean Trump to implement a graduate program in 1958 that offered an MBA and a curriculum leading to a doctoral degree. However, during the first six years of Dean Trump’s tenure, the business school saw the number of graduate students grow almost 80 percent, while undergraduate enrollment dropped by almost 12 percent.

In an effort to reverse the decline of undergraduate student enrollment, Dean Trump proposed the introduction of a four-year undergraduate curriculum in 1958 and again in 1960. Both times he failed to win support. In fact, the policy of admitting freshmen to a four-year undergraduate program at WashU did not become a reality until 1973.

Trump resigned in 1967 to return to teaching and research. In an obituary published in the St. Louis Post Dispatch in August of 1994, Trump was praised by a former star student, Bob Virgil, who later became a dean of the business school. The article stated,

“Robert L. Virgil, another colleague and friend, said Mr. Trump was ‘ahead of his time’ in terms of international education, both in Korea and Tunisia. ‘He was one of the leaders of business education in this country, and made a significant contribution to its development nationally and internationally.’”

centennial logo redFlagRead more about Olin’s first century on the Olin100 website.

Photos courtesy of WUSTL Archives. Top photo: WashU business school professors arrive in Seoul, S.Korea.




Thanksgiving is a uniquely American holiday, family-centric, and unfamiliar to international college students who are left on campus when all the American kids head home for the long weekend in November. That’s why Dean Stuart Greenbaum organized the first Thanksgiving potluck dinner in 1995.

“I came from the Kellogg School at Northwestern, and the campus Thanksgiving dinner there was a popular event,” Greenbaum said. “Students, faculty, alumni brought their families and it was a great community gathering for the business school.”

At the first Olin Thanksgiving, faculty and staff prepared the turkey and traditional meal for a few dozen guests. By the next year, with 161 RSVPs, reinforcements were called in from campus food services. The table, set up in Piper Hallway in Simon Hall, kept getting longer as the number of guests kept multiplying. In 1998, 170 people attended. There were more than 350 guests in 2002!

  • 2008: A record-setting year with more than 600 professors, students, and families in attendance and they gobbled up more than 250 pounds of turkey.
  • 2009: A few statistics from the chef: The kitchen prepared and served 260 pounds of turkey, 100 pounds of white potatoes and 120 pounds of sweet potatoes. They ran out of turkey legs, but no one left hungry. The dessert tables were brimming with pies, cookies and candy, and there was the always-popular soft-serve ice cream.
  • 2011: More than 515 guests were served during the event, at which 28 Knight Center staff members arrived at 4 a.m. to help prepare.
  • 2014: the chefs roasted 50 turkeys to serve more than 500 guests.

Many thanks to the Aramark staff who prepare and serve the Olin Thanksgiving feast every year before heading home to do the same for their families.

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Olin is celebrating its centennial and Gary Hochberg has been a part of the school for almost a third of that century. He arrived in 1982, a young, bearded philosophy professor who had a natural talent for administration, an entrepreneurial spirit, and a passion for serving as advisor, mentor, and cheerleader for all of his students.

Gary Hochberg’s mild manner, friendly welcome, and sincere interest in each and every one of his students is legendary at Olin. He joined the faculty in 1982 and served as Assistant Dean, then Associate Dean of Undergraduate Programs, for 25 years. “Gary is responsible, more than anyone, for the fact that Olin now has one of the highest-quality undergraduate programs in the country,” said Dean Emeritus Bob Virgil of Hochberg’s tenure.

Gary Hochberg with Dean Emeritus Bob Virgil in 1988.

Gary Hochberg with Dean Emeritus Bob Virgil in 1988.

When Virgil hired Hochberg for the newly created position of Assistant Dean for the Undergraduate Program, MBA programs attracted most of the attention and applications at business schools. “Interest in the Undergraduate Program lagged behind the MBA Program in the 1960s and ’70s,” said Virgil. “When interest in undergraduate studies began to grow again in the early ’80s, we conducted a nationwide search for an individual who could revitalize the program. Gary fit the bill perfectly.”

At the time, Hochberg taught philosophy at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania. His attention turned toward university administration, however, while teaching courses in accounting and business ethics. When he arrived at Olin, the BSBA Program attracted only around 400 freshman applicants, and only one student enrolled from outside the United States.

Today, the program receives nearly 4,000 freshman applications from students in the United States and around the world.

Providing students with opportunities abroad was foremost on Hochberg’s agenda. “Between my undergraduate and graduate years, I studied for a year in Germany, and it was an incredibly important experience,” he says. “Study abroad teaches students how to deal with cultural differences, which makes them flexible and adaptable to new situations.” Hochberg was instrumental in establishing Olin’s first study abroad opportunities.

Over the years, Hochberg urged Olin students to take interesting elective classes and to get involved in extracurricular activities on and off campus. He advised them to make connections through student clubs and to perform hands-on service work in the St. Louis community—all to enrich their college experience.

“Nothing is more important to Gary than the education and success of his students,” says Dean Emeritus Mahendra Gupta. “Over his 25 years as Associate Dean of our BSBA Program, he connected with every student and their parents on a personal level. No wonder his students love him and continue to do so as alums.”

In 2007, Hochberg announced he was ready for a new challenge. He became the Director of two Specialized Masters Programs that he helped develop: the Master of Science in Finance (MSF) and the Master of Accounting (MACC).

The programs proved so successful, more were soon introduced, including the Master of Science in Supply Chain Management (MSSCM) in 2009 and the Master of Science in Customer Analytics (MSCA) in 2012. Additionally, the Master of Science in Finance program has expanded to three different tracks—Corporate/Investments, Quantitative, and Wealth Asset Management.

“Enrollment was beyond our wildest expectations,” recalled Hochberg of the early years of the program. “The students were outstanding and committed to their areas of study, so they were a delight to work with.” Specialized Masters Program applications remain strong and steady at nearly 3,000 annually.

hochberg-montageHochberg announced his retirement in 2012, but Dean Gupta wouldn’t fully accept it. He asked Hochberg to serve as the Assistant Dean of Academic Affairs and provide leadership for the new Global MSF Program. The Global MSF program partners with business schools in Singapore, Korea, Herzliya, Spain, and Germany to offer a dual degree/certificate opportunity on two campuses for students pursuing careers in international finance.

“I owe a special debt to Mahendra for having been so ingenious in finding new and different ways for me to be of service to the School after stepping down from my role in the Undergraduate Program,” said Hochberg during his real retirement in 2014. At a reception with many colleagues, former students, and friends from his three-plus decades at WashU, Hochberg took the stage with his guitar and played some of his favorite folk tunes as a memorable way to say so long.

Hochberg dished out some tough love over the years to his own children and to Olin students. They confess, however, to being better people because of his watchfulness. As former student Trina (Williams) Shanks (BSBA ’92, MSW ’00, PhD ’03) said, “Whether I was starting my undergraduate career as a freshman or finishing my PhD, Gary always asked what I planned to do next and challenged me to dream big. He never forgot that a university is first and foremost about educating students and preparing them for excellence.” Shanks was a 1996 Rhodes Scholar and is now an assistant professor of social work at the University of Michigan.

“It’s been an incredible privilege to work at such an extraordinary place for such a long period of time,” says Hochberg. “I’m glad to have known so many bright, hard-working, and appreciative students over the years. I now count many of them among my dearest friends.”

Portions of this article were originally published in Washington Magazine, 2009.

Photos courtesy of WashU Archives.