Opening on January 25, “A ‘Daring Experiment’: Harvard and Business Education for Women, 1937–1970,” is the second in a series of exhibitions organized by Baker Library Historical Collections to mark 2008 as the centennial of Harvard  Business School.

The first eight women admitted to the first year of the MBA program at Harvard Business School, 1963. Back row, left to right: Elizabeth F. Trotman, Susan Lauer Holt, Cecilia B. Rauch, Lynne Sherwood, Elaine Luthy. Front row, left to right: Michelle Roos Turnovsky, Dixie Marchant, Caryl Maclaughlin Brackenridge.

The history of business education for women at Harvard began in 1937 with a certificate program in personnel administration at Radcliffe College. Called “the first daring experiment in ‘practical education’ for women” by Harvard Business School Professor Fritz Roethlisberger, the course eventually evolved into the Harvard–Radcliffe Program in Business Administration (HRPBA), jointly managed by Harvard Business School and Radcliffe College.

As the curricula of the HRPBA and the MBA programs began to merge, the faculty voted in 1959 to admit qualified graduates of the HRPBA to the second year of the MBA program. The first MBA degrees were awarded to women in 1960. In December 1962, HBS faculty voted to accept women into the full two-year MBA program and the HRPBA came to an end. By 1970, women were residents in HBS dormitories, and a new era in women’s education at Harvard was firmly under way.

The exhibit, together with its companion web site located at http://www.library.hbs.edu/hc/daring, features a wide array of historic documents, photographs, publications, and audio interviews from both the Radcliffe College Archives and the Harvard Business School Archives. The exhibit will remain on view through May 9 in the North Lobby at Baker Library.

For more information on “A ‘Daring Experiment” and on Historical Collections in general, see Interview: Laura Linard in this issue.