Chronicle
It was 1902 when business courses became an area of academic focus on campus. The "Commercial College" appears for the first time in that year’s academic catalog, promising that students would acquire "all prerequisites for success in business life."
Based on the philosophy "not by seeing done but by doing he is taught," the program provided hands-on experience in the "business methods of the leading mercantile establishments" from the moment students became part of the Commercial College. Not only did they attend classes, but freshmen helped the college with its business operations, working as bookkeepers to the college.
As sophomores, each Commercial College student was given $5,000 of the college’s money to "commence business." They would create a business venture of their own, operate the business, and turn in the books and balance sheets to their teachers for grading every Friday.
The next level took these students into businesses in the community. Each student would rotate through a series of businesses – real estate, the post office, the railroad, the commission house, the bank, and the wholesale house – "taking charge of each until they thoroughly understand each."
Other courses, most often pursued by "young ladies," were offered in shorthand and typing.
Business courses were part of the curriculum even in the earliest 1867 catalog. However, they would disappear for several years and occasionally reappear. It appears that the Commercial College may have been phased out by about 1909, with a lengthy gap until "Business" reappears as an academic course listing in 1934 and remaining until today.
By 1946, with Culver-Stockton College’s first division plan, the program had evolved into business administration was part of the Division of Social Sciences. It was not identified as its own division until 2001. It has remained as the Business Division through two subsequent reorganizations.
For a look at today’s Business curriculum click here.
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