McDonough School of Business History

Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business began in 1936 as an undergraduate program within the School of Foreign Service and today is recognized as a global leader at the intersection of business and policy and for its values-based approach to business.

In September 1936, the Division of Business and Public Administration launched “to meet demands of government and industry…to facilitate a thorough and practical comprehension of business and government.” At that moment in history, the nation’s capital was becoming recognized as a business center as well as a political city. The new division offered a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration degree with majors in business management, banking, accounting, and public administration.

In 1957, Rev. Joseph Sebes, S.J, founded the School of Business Administration, believing that an understanding of commercial markets is essential to worldwide political stability. Among the faculty, there was a sense that what they were doing was experimental — even revolutionary — because the Jesuit community opposed a school focused on the idea of making money. Nonetheless, the school persevered, and by the 1980s, it was primed for a breakthrough.

The school launched its MBA program in 1981. Along with functional areas such as management, finance, marketing, and accounting, the coursework was infused with the four cornerstones on which the program was based: business-government relations, ethics, international business, and communications. At the time, integrating international business elements in each course was cutting edge. Just a decade after the first class graduated in 1983, U.S. News & World Report ranked the Georgetown MBA 22nd in the country.

The 1980s saw a period of continued growth, including the launch of the Executive Education division for customized programs. It also was a transformative time for research; not only did the school culture become more research-friendly, but resources became available to hire senior researchers in an increasingly competitive market.

In 1993, the school’s name changed again, to the Georgetown School of Business. It ended the decade with a celebration: In 1998, Robert Emmett McDonough, who graduated from the School of Foreign Service in 1949, gifted $30 million to the school, which thereafter became the Robert Emmett McDonough School of Business. The gift—the largest single donation at that time in the university’s history—would be felt across the business school’s operations for years, providing additional, sustained resources for faculty recruitment.

Thus began two decades of extraordinary growth for the school, starting with the naming of George Daly as dean in 2005 and continuing with David A. Thomas and current dean Paul Almeida. Several new degree programs launched, including the Flex MBA, Executive Master’s in Leadership, the Master of Science in Management, Master of Science in Environment and Sustainability Management (in partnership with the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences and the Earth Commons Institute), and the Master of Science in Global Real Assets.

The school began its foray into online programs in 2014 with the Master of Science in Finance, launching a premiere online experience that combined small class sizes, individual attention from faculty, and state-of-the-art course delivery technology. The school expanded its online programs again in 2021 with the Master of Science in Business Analytics and in 2022 with the Flex MBA Online. 

Harkening back to its roots with the School of Foreign Service, the school offered a jointly run Global Executive MBA from 2008 through 2018. The schools partnered again in 2017 to offer the Master of Arts in International Business and Policy, and in 2020 to launch the Dikran Izmirlian Program in Business and Global Affairs, Georgetown’s first joint undergraduate degree program. 

McDonough sought to take its global reputation to the next level by expanding outside of the United States. The Executive MBA Dubai enrolled its first class in 2023. The school also offers programs with partner organizations abroad, including the Executive Master’s in Leadership Qatar and the Master of Science in Global Finance in India.

In addition, several faculty-led centers, initiatives, and institutes took shape focused on such diverse issues as financial markets, entrepreneurship, ethics, real estate, and social enterprise. The school received naming gifts for three of them: the Steers Center for Global Real Estate, the Psaros Center for Financial Markets and Policy, and the Baratta Center for Global Business. Additionally, Dean Almeida created new initiatives that explore how business can partner with other areas to solve the world’s most complex issues, giving rise to the school’s focus on “fields of the future”: the AI, Analytics, and Future of Work Initiative, the Business of Health Initiative, and the Business of Sustainability Initiative.

Additionally, the school has expanded its focus on community impact throughout the D.C. region through offerings like the Pivot Program for formerly incarcerated citizens, Georgetown Reach to educate and prepare underserved middle and high school students (and their parents) about the college application process, and the Small Business Corps, which matches student consultants to projects that support local small businesses.

The most visible legacy is the school’s current home, the $82.5 million, 179,000-square-foot Rafik B. Hariri Building, named for the late Lebanese prime minister and philanthropist whose son is a 1992 alumnus of the school. Since 2009, for the first time in its history, the entire school has shared one home.

Today, McDonough is home to some 1,400 undergraduates, 2,000 graduate students, and hundreds of participants in Custom Executive Education programs. The school also has more than 25,000 alumni from our growing list of undergraduate and graduate programs around the world. The faculty now has more than 100 professors teaching full time. And the McDonough School of Business enjoys a reputation for academic excellence manifested by distinctive and global programs, scholarship, and activities that leverage the rich fabric of Washington, D.C., reflect the Georgetown expertise and identity, and are guided by the university’s Jesuit values.