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Spangler Center in Top Form
OPM Honors Marty Marshall with Professorship
HBS Honored for Addressing Business and Societal Issues
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Spangler Center in Top Form

A cloudless blue sky and a chilly wind provided a brisk backdrop for a December celebration of progress made in the construction of the new Spangler Center. The "topping out" ceremony, a Viking tradition that pays tribute to the trees sacrificed in building a new structure, marked the halfway point in the construction of the new campus center. "The Spangler Center will literally transform this campus," Dean Kim B. Clark told over one hundred hardy souls who turned out for the event.

C.D. ("Dick") Spangler, Jr. (MBA '56), himself a former construction industry executive, then took the microphone and thanked all of those who had "used their hands and their brains to put this building together perfectly." Spangler, who together with his wife and two daughters made the building possible, praised the new structure's "noble purpose to make HBS a better place for our students." He then accepted a Superman T-shirt from Joe Lavin, one of the many members of Ironworkers Local #7 of Boston whose skills, courage, and talents were being honored.

The building's final beam (of steel, not wood), signed by dozens of people involved in the project and sporting an American flag and a small evergreen tree, was then lifted to the top of the structure. As spectators watched admiringly, a huge crane floated the beam several stories up to the top of the building, where it was gracefully accepted and put into place by two ironworkers in hard hats.

The Spangler Center construction continues apace and is on course to be completed by this fall.

OPM Honors Marty Marshall with Professorship

Last fall, graduates of the Owner/President Management Program (OPM) honored one of their favorite professors by endowing a new HBS chair: the Martin Marshall OPM Professorship of Business Administration.

A member of the HBS faculty for 44 years, Martin V. ("Marty") Marshall (MBA 2/ '47, DCS '53) has influenced legions of HBS students, especially those involved in owning and running their own businesses. Former student W. James Hindman (9th OPM) led the effort to fund the chair. "Marty changes the way you do business - you begin to look at everything differently, thinking bigger and more comprehensively," said Hindman, the founder of Jiffy Lube and retired chairman of Youth Services International. "Marty has given his students not only the confidence but also the skills to take on challenges they never would have previously even considered. We established this chair to show our appreciation."

Marshall worked his way through the University of Missouri and was commissioned in the U.S. Navy before matriculating at HBS and joining the faculty in 1949. For two decades he helped shape the Marketing area through his teaching and the development of courses and cases. During his tenure at HBS he held numerous important administrative positions - including chairing the committee that admitted women to the School - and helped establish several schools of management overseas. His interest in entrepreneurship blossomed in the 1970s when he first taught in HBS's Smaller Company Management Program, an Executive Education offering that he later transformed into the OPM Program. As chairman of OPM from 1982 to 1993, Marshall won the praises of countless students, including those who established the professorship bearing his name.

HBS Honored for Addressing Business and Societal Issues

HBS, along with ten other business schools, has been recognized for its "cutting-edge programs incorporating societal-business issues" in a report issued by the World Resources Institute and the Initiative for Social Innovation through Business. Titled Beyond Grey Pinstripes: Preparing MBAs for Social and Environmental Stewardship, the report praised HBS as a leader in fostering social awareness, incorporating social concerns into coursework and projects, and supporting student activities and faculty research that influence both classroom materials and corporate decision-making.

Steven R. Nelson (MBA '88), executive director of the HBS Initiative on Social Enterprise, accepted an award honoring the School's efforts at a ceremony hosted by Citigroup in New York last October. "This is a tribute to the broad range of activities at HBS focusing on nonprofit organizations and other private social-purpose enterprises," Nelson said recently. "Led by faculty chair Professor Jim Austin, the Initiative's research, course development, and publications have had a significant impact on many of our students, not to mention educational institutions far beyond this campus."

Since its creation in 1993, the HBS Initiative on Social Enterprise, supported by the John C. Whitehead (MBA 11/ '47) Fund for Not-for-Profit Management and other resources, has engaged in a wide range of activities. Among the results of these efforts are more than 150 cases and notes; a number of working papers, articles, and books; and MBA courses and seminars such as Entrepreneurship in the Social Sector, Business Leadership in the Social Sector, and Effective Leadership of Social Enterprise. Two Executive Education programs have also been developed under the aegis of the Initiative - Strategic Perspectives in Nonprofit Management and Governing for Nonprofit Excellence: Critical Issues for Board Leadership.

The two entities that issued Beyond Grey Pinstripes, the World Resources Institute, headquartered in Washington, D.C., and the Initiative for Social Innovation through Business, a Manhattan-based program of The Aspen Institute, surveyed programs at 313 schools. They discovered that less than 20 percent of business schools are training MBAs to manage the social and environmental challenges facing business. That finding prompted the Business Roundtable, an association of leading U.S. CEOs, to issue a statement urging more business schools to focus on those areas. "The ability to integrate these considerations into business activities is a competitive advantage," the CEOs wrote. "Critical to success in these endeavors are well-trained managers who can help us meet our social and environmental stewardship goals."