Take a trip through the history of Stanford Graduate School of Business with this timeline. Scroll through the milestones, moments, and memories that defined Stanford GSB’s first century, from its launch in 1925 to its Centennial celebration in 2025.
A few highlights from the decades:
1920s: Stanford GSB opens with 16 students in classrooms next to the biology department. (“There was a persistent odor of dogfish in the halls,” one faculty member recalls.)
1930s: The school recruits prominent professionals as “consulting professors.” Unfortunately, Walt Disney does not accept the invitation.
1940s: MBA enrollment plummets to 23 during World War II, only to surge to more than 570 when vets rush back to the classroom in the late ’40s.
1950s: Stanford GSB gets its first computer, an 800-pound “mobile” IBM 610.
1960s: Persis Emmett Rockwood, PhD ’60, becomes the first woman to receive a doctorate from Stanford GSB.
1970s: Dean Arjay Miller establishes the Public Management Program, the first program of its kind at a U.S. business school.
1980s: MBA students compete for classes in a “free market” course signup system. “Winners are often seen jumping for joy in the halls.”
1990s: Finance professor William Sharpe receives the 1990 Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences — the first of six Stanford GSB faculty to win the award.
2000s: A broader, more flexible MBA core curriculum is adopted in 2007.
2010s: In 2011, the school moves into the 12.5-acre Knight Management Center.
2020: As the COVID pandemic spreads, Stanford GSB shifts all its classes online in less than three days.
For 100 years, we’ve been dedicated to the things that haven’t happened yet, and the people who are about to dream them up. In 2025, we celebrated our Centennial through stories and events.
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