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- When I came here, it felt like,

"Now I'm in the major leagues."

I realized how high the standards are.

- We're the oldest PhD program
within a Business School,

which is pretty extraordinary

to think of sort of how long
ago the recognition was there,

that we wanted to be training
not just business leaders

in practice, but to be
training the future leaders

of academic discipline.

- So I arrived in 1966. Oh, it was marvelous.

The place just crackled with
ideas and open discussion.

And I ended up throwing out
all the ideas I came with.

- What I especially liked
about learning things here

is this is an interdisciplinary school.

So you didn't have to dive in a silo,

you can wrap your arms around huge areas.

- What is special is that we
are part of a business school,

training PhD students across
a range of disciplines,

not just economics or finance,

which we deploy in Economics Department,

but also students are doing
psychology, operation research.

- At Chicago, the ideas
were the authorities,

not the people.

And they were all up for grabs.

- What we're trying to
create here is people

who produce knowledge,
not just consume it.

And that's the real challenge,
I think, of PhD education.

- I was never told at any point

that, "Oh, this is not
real finance, you know,

this question is to outside of the box."

On the contrary, it was always,

"You should do what you want to do.

And we're gonna think about placements,

once the paper is ready."

- You don't make any assumptions.
You question everything.

- It's not enough just to know
what other people have done,

it's also important to know
what needs to be done next.

To be able to do that,

you need to be able to ask questions

beyond the questions that have been asked

in the previous literature,

or in the previous knowledge
that's already out there.

- When you're going to seminars here,

or watching my colleagues
talk in the hallways,

you'll often see them in what looked like

very contentious battles.

But really, they're just
after what's the right answer.

- When PhD students come here,

they're able to sort of bring
that into their own souls.

And I think that that
really pushes them then

to sort of be the best possible
researcher that they can.

- Chicago Booth is known for

it's quite aggressive questioning style.

I think that we get a
little bit of a bad rap,

there is a point to the
aggressive questioning,

and it is to clarify the idea.

In Chicago Booth the spirit
is be tough on the idea,

not on the person.

- Throughout the world, we're
appreciating more and more

how influential research can be.

I think our PhD students going forward,

will increasingly be placed in positions

both in scholarship and in the
government and in business,

where they can have major influence.

- So the fact that this is
the oldest doctoral program

in business that has
been going for 100 years,

gives some indication of the
commitment of this school

to training people, we still
have those same values.

And so it's always
going to generate people

who change the world, who
change the way you think.

I can't tell you at this
point how that will happen.

That's exactly the idea.

New people come in with new ideas

and they learn how to
implement them at the school,

and they change the way
we think about the world.

And that's going to keep going.

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Chicago Booth’s PhD Program Receives $100 Million Gift in Celebration of Its 100th Anniversary

On May 12, we celebrated the PhD program's centennial milestone and reflect on the tremendous impact PhD faculty, students, and alumni have made on research and business education throughout the decades. In this spirit, we were excited to announce that notable entrepreneur and philanthropist, Ross Stevens, PhD ’96, made a gift of $100 million to our program. Stevens spoke with conference attendees in a conversation moderated by Dean Madhav Rajan during the celebration’s Gala Dinner. Please find the event details below.

Chicago Booth’s PhD Program Receives $100 Million Gift in Celebration of Its 100th Anniversary
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A Centennial Celebration

Our 100th anniversary celebration took place on Friday, May 12 and Saturday, May 13, 2023. The centennial celebration included an academic conference with plenary speakers and breakout sessions by discipline, as well as social events. It was a wonderful opportunity for alumni to reconnect with former classmates and Chicago Booth colleagues. Learn more about Chicago Booth's history and far-reaching contributions to business practice here.

See the 2023 Agenda 

A Centennial Celebration

Our History by the Numbers

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968

PhDs Awarded Since 1920

968
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755

PhD Alumni Living Across the Globe

755
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398

PhD Alumni Working in Higher Education

398

PhD through the Years

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An Early Trailblazer

Learn about the many accomplishments of Ursula Batchelder Stone, PhD ’29, the first woman to earn a PhD in business from an American university.

 Ursula Batchelder Stone vintage black and white headshot
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Booth Now Ursula Batchelder Stone
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