The University of Michigan Ross School of Business (branded as Michigan Ross) is the business school of the University of Michigan, a public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
The school was originally established in 1924 as the School of Business Administration. Today, it offers bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees, as well as an executive education program. Michigan Ross also collaborates with other colleges and schools at the University of Michigan to offer dual degree programs. Additionally, the school's Executive Education program includes a Distinguished Leader Certificate. Michigan Ross maintains the tenth largest endowment among all business schools in the United States, with a total of US$435 million as of 2016.
History
Twentieth century
The first business courses were offered at the University of Michigan in 1900. Economics Department Chairman Henry Carter Adams oversaw the expanding practical courses to prepare students for business careers. The idea for the school came from the economics department. In 1918, the university's College of Literature, Science, and the Arts began issuing a Certificate of Business Administration. In 1923, University President Marion LeRoy Burton hired Edmund Ezra Day to serve as the founding dean of a new business school.
The University of Michigan School of Business Administration was founded in 1924; it offered a two-year Master of Business Administration after three years of general studies. There were 14 faculty members, including one of the first women to be part of a business school. In 1925, the Bureau of Business Research was founded to facilitate and coordinate faculty research and publish research monographs and case studies.
In 1926, after serving three years, Day was succeeded as dean by Clare Griffin, who initially came to the university to teach marketing. The same year, faculty member William Andrew Paton founded The Accounting Review. In 1935, the school began offering a PhD in Business Administration. In 1938, the first evening Master of Business Administration (MBA) classes were offered. In 1940, school enrollment reached 200 students. Between 1942 and 1943, a Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) degree was introduced.
In 1943, Russell Stevenson became the school's third dean. In 1947, enrollment exceeded 1,000 students, reaching 800 BBA students and 400 MBA students by 1949. In 1948, the school opened a new building that cost $2.5 million and had a nine-story tower. The same year, prominent economist Paul McCracken joined the faculty. From 1950 to 1959, the school introduced the Public Utility Executive Program, its first stand-alone, non-degree program for continuing education of business executives.
Floyd Bond became the school's fourth dean in 1960. The same year, the school launched its first international joint venture in Taiwan and Bond appointed a committee to better integrate global business into the school's curriculum. In 1966, Bond established the Ad Hoc Committee on Educational Programs in Business Administration for Negroes, which tried to attract more African-American students but the initiative and a number of student strikes and other protests in the following years demanded more minority enrollment. In 1971, the school began a $1.5 million expansion of the physical facilities and assembly hall. By 1971, total enrollment exceeded 1,300, more than three-quarters of whom were graduate students with 370 in the Evening MBA Program. In 1972, the school's first two alumni clubs in New York and California, held their first meetings. In 1974, Alfred Edwards joined the faculty as a professor of business administration and director of the research division, later becoming known as the school's ambassador for diversity.
Gilbert Whitaker became the school's fifth dean in 1979 and established an enlarged Office of Development & Alumni Relations. The following year, total degree-program enrollment reached 2,000, including about 600 BBA students, while the number of faculty members exceeded 100. From 1980 to 1989, the school established 17 joint-degree programs with other U-M units. In 1982, Whitaker announced a $15 million fundraising campaign for three new buildings, including a library. The campaign raised $17 million and the buildings opened by 1984. In 1983, the school joined the Consortium for Graduate Study in Management and began offering a Master of Accounting degree. In 1990, the school received a federal grant to establish a Center for International Business Education.
In 1990, B. Joseph White became the school's sixth dean. In 1991, White and Associate Dean Paul Danos introduced a major MBA curriculum overhaul by initiating the Multidisciplinary Action Project (MAP), a full-time, seven-week project that allowed teams of students to work on real-world business challenges for sponsor companies. After a pilot run, it became part of the MBA core curriculum in 1993. In 1995, an international MAP option was created as a separate program. In 2015, MAP became an option in the undergraduate curriculum.
In 1992, the William Davidson Institute was founded. In 1995, the Tauber Institute was founded as a joint project with the College of Engineering. In 1996, the Global MBA Program is introduced, allowing students to study abroad in one-month terms. The same year, the Frederick A. and Barbara M. Erb Environmental Management Institute was established. In 1999, the Samuel Zell and Robert H. Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies was founded. In 2000, Sam Wyly Hall opened to house Executive Education and other programs. The same year, the number of faculty members approached 200. In 2001, the school introduced an Executive MBA Program, which targeted business leaders in supervisory positions.
During White's tenure, other initiatives, such as research on how to supplement the GMAT, helped cement the school's reputation for innovations that produce business leaders.
Twenty-first century In 2001, Robert J. Dolan became the school's seventh dean. The next year, the John R. and Georgene M. Tozzi Electronic Business and Finance Center was established. In 2003, several faculty members published "Positive Organizational Scholarship: Foundations of a New Discipline", a study on how to create positive organizations. The school would later found the Center for Positive Organizations. In 2004, alumnus Stephen M. Ross donated US$100 million to the school, which was renamed the Stephen M. Ross School of Business. This was the largest-ever gift to a U.S. business school and to the University of Michigan. The Ross gift funded a campus overhaul; the school demolished of existing building space and renovated or added .Webcams showing the demolition and renovation can be found at two locations: http://www.plantext.bf.umich.edu/plantext/projects/Ross/webcam.html ; http://www.bus.umich.edu/CommunityCreation/webcams/
The Ross Leadership Initiative, later renamed the Sanger Leadership Center, was established in 2006 to improve the leadership development of MBA students. In 2009, the school's Master of Supply Chain Management degree program was introduced. The same year, the $145 million Stephen M. Ross building opened. In 2010, a Weekend MBA Program was introduced, allowing students to complete an MBA in two years while working full-time.
In 2011, Alison Davis-Blake became the school's eighth and first female dean. In 2012, the Executive MBA Program was expanded to a second campus in Los Angeles.
Stephen M. Ross made a second $100 million gift as a part of a larger fundraising effort in 2013; the gift aimed "to help complete the vision of a unified business school complex, including one new building, one fully renovated building, and other improvements". The same year, a minor in business was offered for non-business undergraduate students. In late 2013, the school launched a major fundraising campaign.
In 2014, a new 10-month Master of Management degree was introduced. The same year, the school began sponsoring the annual Positive Business Conference. During Davis-Blake's tenure, the school broadened its global presence, increasing the number of overseas experiences for students and beginning a partnership with Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The Desai Accelerator for startup businesses—a joint effort between Ross and the University of Michigan College of Engineering—opened in downtown Ann Arbor in 2014. The same year, Davis-Blake oversaw a large, donor-funded construction project that includes the new Jeff T. Blau Hall, as well as renovations to several older buildings on the business campus.
Davis-Blake announced in 2015 that she would step down at the end of her five-year term in 2016 to pursue a broader role in higher education. In 2015, Michigan Ross announced the Alumni Advantage program that offers free lifetime open-enrollment executive education tuition for all its degree alumni and half-price tuition for non-Ross UM alumni. In 2016, the Jeff T. Blau Hall and the renovated Kresge Hall opened.
In 2016, Scott DeRue became the school's ninth dean. He joined the Michigan Ross faculty in 2007 and has been an associate dean. In 2017, enrollment exceeded 3,000 students, including about 1,600 BBA students and 800 full-time MBA students. Nearly 40% of incoming BBA students are women, and about half are from other states.
Francine Lafontaine stepped in as the business school's interim dean, effective May 24, 2021. The following year, the university's leaders selected Sharon F. Matusik as the college's next dean. Matusik's term began on August 1, 2022, and ends on July 31, 2027.
Rankings
U.S. News & World Report, in its 2019 ranking of top MBA programs, placed Michigan Ross seventh in its ranking of business schools in the United States; it was tied with the University of California at Berkeley's Haas School of Business. In the same publication and year's BBA rankings, Michigan Ross was ranked fourth. In the most recent U.S. News & World Report for 2023, the school ranked 10th.
In the U.S. News & World Report specialty rankings for 2019, Michigan Ross's full-time MBA program was ranked third in the Management and Production/Operations categories, fourth in Marketing and Accounting, fifth in Nonprofit and International, sixth in Supply Chain/Logistics, seventh in Entrepreneurship, and tenth in Finance. In 2023 Bloomberg Businessweek ranked the MBA program 9th overall.
Facilities and institutes
Upon its establishment in 1924, the business school was located in Tappan Hall, the oldest extant classroom building on campus. The original 1894 wing was designed by the Detroit firm Spier & Rohns, and the south wing was designed by Luckenbach / Ziegelman & Partners.
The school moved to its current site in 1948. Authorized by the Regents in July 1945, the site was in the northern half of a block surrounded by Monroe Street, Tappan Street, Hill Street, and Haven Street. It was purchased at the time construction was begun. Ten private dwellings were demolished for to make way for the construction, which began in August 1946. The business school was the first skyscraper on campus and was designed by architects Lee and Kenneth C. Black, of Lansing, Michigan.