The Tuck Alumni
THEY FORM ONE OF BIGGEST ASSETS OF DARTMOUTH'S BUSINESS SCHOOL
FACULTY MEETINGS are not always the most pleasant of occasions, but at least once a year, namely toward the end, there is one that is always a happy occasion. This is when we vote to recommend to the President and the Trustees second-year Tuck students for the degree of Master of Commercial Science. Such a meeting has been held every year since the first one on May 25, 1901, with the exception of the war years, 1918, 1919, 1943, 1944. The result is that the total number of living graduates from the Tuck School with the M.C.S. degree now stands at 780. To be sure, this is not an impressive total but we must remember that the number of second-year students in the Tuck School in any year has been and will be limited to between go and 40. We are far more interested in a carefully-selected group and a number small enough to enable us to give a great deal of attention to each individual student both in class and out. Thanks to the far-sightedness and generosity of Edward Tuck, we can afford to be quite discriminating and consequently do a far more effective job for each of our students.
The very first meeting of a Tuck School faculty was held on September 3, 1900, in the President's Office. That first year Was a busy one for the faculty since it had to lay down all of the regulations, procedures and other matters pertaining to the basic policies of the Tuck School. By the time the faculty met on May 25, 1901, no final decision had been made as to the kind of degree that was to be awarded the three aspiring candidates. Consequently, it was voted to issue each one of them a Certificate stating that he had completed successfully the two-year program. These first three graduates of the Tuck School were: Walter Blair, Oliver Wallace Foster and Henry Nelson Teague. However, when the time came for the Faculty to recommend candidates for degrees on June 16, 1902, it had been decided that the degree that the Tuck School was to award from then on would be that of Master of Commercial Science.
Although the M.C.S. degree has been awarded to Tuck graduates every year except during the war years, there have been times when there were very few candidates, especially in the early years prior to 1912. The smallest number in any one year was for that of 1904 when only one student qualified for a degree. However, when we consider the stature, including physical and personal characteristics, of this particular Tuck graduate, we can all agree that he is an excellent representative to have for an entire graduating class. This distinction is held by Victor Macomber Cutter, Dartmouth 'O3, Tuck 'O4, now a life Trustee of Dartmouth College, a lecturer on the staff of the Tuck School and one whom many Tuck graduates in the last decade or so think of with great admiration and warm personal feeling.
Before World War I the largest class was the one in 1914 with 18 graduates, but after the war in the early 20's they increased considerably in number and since that time have averaged between 25 and 40. The largest group to receive the M.C.S. degree in one year was that of 1941 when 46 men were graduated. The last group to receive this degree from the Tuck School was graduated in December 1942 when 16 "accelerated" students who normally would have completed their work in 1943, left the halls of the Tuck School and headed immediately for the armed forces.
Many years ago second-year students in the Tuck School organized the Tuck School Clearing House, an informal way of promoting their interests in the many fields of business by meeting regularly to listen to outstanding speakers and to discuss some of the broader philosophic, social, economic and other aspects of the world of affairs. The Clearing House now has two very large and active alumni groups, one in Boston and the other in New York. Each of these groups holds in the spring an annual meeting at which they have an opportunity to learn from the Dean of the Tuck School and several of its faculty of the activities of the School during the past year. At the same time a guest speaker is invited to talk to and discuss with them some of the important broader problems facing the country and the world in the fields of business.
We on the Tuck faculty rely so much upon these groups of active and interested alumni. They are a great help to us in getting young men in different parts of the country interested in coming to the Tuck School. They .are invaluable to us in helping us to keep in close touch with the thinking, the problems and the current developments that go on in all lines of business activity. They do this by discussing such matters with us at our annual meetings, in small informal groups throughout the year and by visiting us on Hanover Plain to think out loud about their own problems. In these ways we on the faculty not only succeed in keeping quite familiar with current trends and developments but they provide a source for obtaining very important teaching materials in the form of problems of all kinds and larger cases for use in the classroom and comprehensive examinations. In these ways they help us meet one of the important obligations that each member of our Faculty has, namely, to maintain direct contacts with the activities in the world of action so that our teaching may be more realistic and stimulating to our students. Then, too, I must indeed mention the equally important contributions that various of our alumni make from time to time as they help us do our job at the Tuck School not only by meeting with the members, of the faculty but also by giving lectures to our students and conducting seminar sessions. We are greatly indebted to them for many forms of help and support and look forward so much to getting even more of this from them when we again have civilian students and can return to our two-year program leading to the M.C.S. degree.
Although the 780 living Tuck graduates with the M.C.S. degree are technically the only real "Tuck graduates," there are close to 3,000 others who have completed the first year of Tuck School work as their senior year at Dartmouth and who for various reasons were not able to return for the second year. Large numbers of these have frequently asked if it would not be possible for them also to be considered as part of the "Tuck Family." Naturally we are always happy to have them at our annual Clearing House meetings and every week we are delighted to welcome back to the School some of these men who return to Hanover to visit. These visits and hews received by letter from both first and secondyear Tuck men are reported regularly in the Tuck Notes in the ALUMNI MAGAZINE. It is a genuine pleasure and gives us a real sense of satisfaction to hear so many of them tell us that even the one year that they spent at the Tuck School seemed to pull together for them so many educational strings and to give them a better grasp and understanding of the modern world.
Since 1930 when we moved over into the new Tuck School group of buildings, we have experienced that those of our alumni who have spent two years with us living in our dormitories, eating in Stell Hall, working together with us in the classrooms and playing together in their free hours, have developed strong group feelings, many common personal educational and professional interests and feel that their second year at the Tuck School provided a most happy and effective terminal period for their five years at Dartmouth.
We on the Tuck School faculty have a storehouse of riches in our alumni. As they write to us and as they return to visit with us, we are repaid many fold for the efforts we have spent in working with them. We hope to continue a close relationship with as large a number as possible of our graduates not only for the purpose of enjoying association with them, but for the purpose of enlisting more of them at more frequent intervals in helping us in our work with each new group of Tuck School students.
BEING A TUCK SCHOOL STUDENT MEANS HARD WORK and requires plenty of application, as most alumni and all the current Supply Corps candidates will bear out. The above scenes show the Navy trainees (top) in an advanced accounting class being taught by Prof, Charles W. Sargent 'l5 in the School's accounting and statistics laboratory; (center) at work in the calculating-machines room adjoining the laboratory; and (bottom) preparing assignments in the School's complete and attractive library. The bust at the left of the bottom picture is of Frederick Winslow Taylor, pioneer in scientific business management, who is honored by the Taylor Society of Scientific Management which held its first organized meeting at Tuck School in 1911.
BEING A TUCK SCHOOL STUDENT MEANS HARD WORK and requires plenty of application, as most alumni and all the current Supply Corps candidates will bear out. The above scenes show the Navy trainees (top) in an advanced accounting class being taught by Prof, Charles W. Sargent 'l5 in the School's accounting and statistics laboratory; (center) at work in the calculating-machines room adjoining the laboratory; and (bottom) preparing assignments in the School's complete and attractive library. The bust at the left of the bottom picture is of Frederick Winslow Taylor, pioneer in scientific business management, who is honored by the Taylor Society of Scientific Management which held its first organized meeting at Tuck School in 1911.
BEING A TUCK SCHOOL STUDENT MEANS HARD WORK and requires plenty of application, as most alumni and all the current Supply Corps candidates will bear out. The above scenes show the Navy trainees (top) in an advanced accounting class being taught by Prof, Charles W. Sargent 'l5 in the School's accounting and statistics laboratory; (center) at work in the calculating-machines room adjoining the laboratory; and (bottom) preparing assignments in the School's complete and attractive library. The bust at the left of the bottom picture is of Frederick Winslow Taylor, pioneer in scientific business management, who is honored by the Taylor Society of Scientific Management which held its first organized meeting at Tuck School in 1911.
THE ORIGINAL TUCK SCHOOL, facing the campus from the west, was opened in 1902 and served as the School's headquarters until the present Tuck unit was first used in the fall of 1930. It has been renamed McNutt Hall and now houses the Personnel Bureau and the Departments of Education, Graphics and Psychology. Old Sanborn Hall can be seen behind the building on the left.
