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Two Professors Leave Their Mark on Wharton
Management professor Edward H. Bowman, a
well-known expert in managerial decision
making and corporate strategy, died last fall of
complications from heart surgery. He was 73.
“Many faculty will remember Ned Bowman
as a mentor,” notes Janice Bellace, deputy
dean of Wharton. “He was always willing to
help junior professors with their research and
advise them on academic projects. He was
one of the most well-liked and esteemed people
in this university.”
Bowman was the Reginald H. Jones Professor of Corporate
Management and director of the highly respected
Reginald H. Jones Center for Management Policy, Strategy
and Organization. His research and journal publications
focused on the concerns of the CEO, corporate risk, corporate
governance and corporate social responsibility, in
addition to managerial decision making.
“Even when he was deputy dean, Ned would take frequent
walks around campus, stopping to browse in libraries
or listen to music at Irvine Auditorium,” says Bruce Kogut,
Felix Zandman Professor of Management and co-director of
the Jones Center. “He always maintained his interest in the
life of the mind.”
Bowman received his undergraduate degree from M.I.T,
his MBA from Wharton in 1949 and his doctorate from Ohio
State University. He also received an honorary degree from
Yale, where he was comptroller from 1966 to 1969. He was
dean of Ohio State University’s College of Business from
1974 to 1979.
Bowman came to Wharton in 1983, serving as acting
deputy dean for academic affairs from 1989 to 1991. He was
a member of the editorial board of the Strategic Management
Journal from 1980 until his death.
“Ned was a man of great integrity,” notes Bellace. “He
always strove for excellence, and instilled that same drive in
those who worked with him. He will be greatly missed.”
Jean Crockett, a well-known economist who
was chair of Wharton’s finance department
from 1977 to 1983, died last fall at age 79.
She was the first woman to chair a depart-ment
at Wharton, the first woman to head the
Faculty Senate (1972-73) and the first woman
to chair the board of the Federal Reserve Bank
of Philadelphia (appointed in 1982). She
served on the Bank’s Consumer Advisory
Council from 1983 to 1988.
Crockett earned a BA, master’s and PhD in economics
from the University of Chicago and a master’s in mathe-matics
from the University of Colorado. She joined Wharton
in 1954. Her expertise was in the areas of consumption and
saving, investment, financial interest rates, markets and the
economics of health care.
In 1989, the Association of Women Faculty and Admin-istrators
presented her with its Distinguished Faculty Award
for her leadership and for her dedication in furthering the
careers of junior colleagues and graduate students.
“She and I gave a course in the finance department on
the economic/financial problems of cities,” notes Jamshed
Ghandhi, director of the Huntsman Program in Interna-tional
Studies & Business. “I appreciated then that she had
a deep commitment to social justice and empathy for the
poor and the underdog, not in an abstract, academic way but
as an activist, one who felt that she, and we, must make a
difference in people’s lives.
“But the logical economist was also always there. She
never espoused easy, feel-good sorts of policies, but recog-nized
that policies had to be viable to be sustainable,
especially in a world of increasing self-centeredness. Jean was
passionate in her causes, but always tempered by reason.”
After her retirement in 1990, Crockett continued to work
with the League of Women Voters, the American Association
of University Women, the Women’s Democratic Coalition
and the Chester, Pa., YWCA, where she was a trustee.
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