A Smooth-running Organization Administrative Staff
Mary E. Osgood, ca. 1940.
Mary Elizabeth Osgood joined the Bureau of Business Research in 1912 after graduating from Simmons College in 1909. She was the School’s first woman grader of written reports. In 1941, Osgood became Secretary of the School and oversaw all day-to-day administrative operations.
Case assembly, ca. 1960.
Pioneered by Harvard Business School faculty in the 1920s, the case method of teaching is fundamental to the HBS curriculum. The administrative staff traditionally has been responsible for organizing, assembling, and distributing cases.
Baker Library circulation desk, ca. 1940.
HBS professor and historian Melvin Copeland noted the contribution of the Baker Library staff: “The Library personnel, it should be noted, has included not a few of the women who have contributed so loyally and effectively to the development of the School.”12 Women staff members at Baker edited the publication Business Literature: A Reading List for Students and Businessmen in the 1950s and 60s and authored publications such as Some Medici Manuscripts, published in 1929.
- 12
- Jeffrey L. Cruikshank, A Delicate Experiment: The Harvard Business School: 1908-1945 (Boston, Mass: Harvard Business School Press, 1987), p. 141. ←
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