The Historian’s Notebook: ‘Early Applications Will Be Appreciated’
Buoyed by confidence in its mission and one semester of success, SOM pressed to immediately grow its faculty.
The Historian’s Notebook: 50 Years of Business & Society is a blog series created in preparation for the 50th anniversary of Yale SOM in September 2026. The series is written by Yale SOM’s resident historian, Michelle Spinelli. Reach out if you have an idea for a blog post, memories or photos to share, or an inquiry about SOM history.
On Sunday, January 9, 1977, an attentive New York Times reader might have noticed an advertisement calling for faculty across all business and management disciplines to apply for positions at the fledgling Yale School of Organization and Management.
Yale SOM faced tough competition for the reader’s attention that day. The temperature in New York City hovered around 24° Fahrenheit, and people were focused on that afternoon’s Super Bowl XI, in which the Minnesota Vikings and the Oakland Raiders would face off at the Rose Bowl. There were also multiple stories about the incoming presidential administration and its economic and foreign policy goals; Jimmy Carter was due to become the 39th president of the United States in just 11 days.
Readers also might have been preoccupied by a front-page story about pirates in motorized dugout canoes raiding Nigerian port cities. For armchair detectives, coverage of the heist of $4 million in gems from a Spanish cathedral would have provided interesting fodder.
In any case, with help from the ad, the SOM faculty grew quickly. And those new faculty members allowed the school to grow its student body and expand its offerings in a variety of disciplines.
And in case you’re wondering, Oakland defeated Minnesota, 32–14.
