Featured Collection

Joanne Martin – First Tenured Woman at GSB

Joanne Martin was hired as an assistant professor of Organizational Behavior in the Graduate School of Business in 1977. She went on to become the first tenured female professor in 1984.

Joanne Martin was, in her own words, "the first GSB faculty member to be pregnant, first woman to earn tenure, first to be promoted to full professor, and the first to be given an endowed chair."  

In 2001 she was the first woman to be selected to receive the Distinguished Educator Award of the Academy of Management.

Credit: Stanford GSB Archive

Steve Jobs Visits the GSB

Steve Jobs cofounded Apple Computer, Inc. in 1976 and served as CEO from 1997-2011. In 1981, he came to the Graduate School of Business to have lunch with Dean McPherson and tour the current computer facility. Afterwards he donated five Apple computers to the school.

In this photograph, Steve is sitting on top of a desk speaking in a classroom at the Sloan Top Management Seminar at the Graduate School of Business.

Credit: Stacy Geiken / Stanford News Service

The Graduate School of Business has produced six Nobel prize winners.

The first in 1990 was William F. Sharpe, Professor Emeritus, Finance, for his pioneering work in the theory of financial economics.

In 1997, Myron S. Scholes,  Professor Emeritus, Finance, created a new method to determine the value of derivatives.

A. Michael Spence (Philip H. Knight Professor, Emeritus, and Former Dean) became the third professor at the school to win in 2001 for his analyses of markets with asymmetric information.

The award in 2020 was awarded jointly to Paul R. Milgrom, Professor (by courtesy), Economics,  and Robert B. Wilson (the Adams Distinguished Professor of Management, Emeritus) for improvements to auction theory and inventions of new auction formats.

Guido W. Imbens (the Applied Econometrics Professor and Professor of Economics)  won in 2021, for his methodological contributions to the analysis of casual relationships.

MBA Students in 1974

In the early 1970’s, the number of women students attending the Graduate School of Business continued to grow. 34 are enrolled in the Class of 1974 (in contrast, there were two in the Class of 1964.) 

The year this photograph was taken, Myra Strober became the first female faculty member at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Times and attitudes were changing.

Photo: Women from Smith College. L-R Anna Marie Schweizer, Nancy Denero, Jane Strauss, Alice Kaplan, Barbara Burgess.

Credit: Mercado Jose

Ernest Arbuckle – Dean of the Graduate School of Business 1958–1968

Ernest C. Arbuckle was the third Dean of the Graduate School of Business from 1958–1968. Arbuckle restructured the GSB, changing the institution from a vocational MBA focus to a research base. He is credited with creating the modern GSB, increasing enrollment, strengthening academics, and doubling the size of the faculty. 

Arbuckle led the “Give ’em the Axe” cheer at a 1967 football game. The Stanford Daily reported that the crowd went wild as he “freaked out” on the cheerleading platform, as seen in this photograph.

Credit: Chuck Painter / Stanford News Service