How NYU Stern Got its Name

We’ve been digging through the archives here in the Oppy office and noticed that it’s been almost a quarter of a century since New York’s Graduate School of Business Administration officially became the Stern School of Business after a $30 million donation from alumnus, American businessman and real estate developer Leonard N. Stern.

According to a report in the September 1988 edition of the Oppy (or the GBA Opportunity as it was then called), the name change was mostly well received by faculty and students.

“The selling of the name is standard practice,” Finance Professor and Chairman of the MBA program Edward Altman told the newspaper.

“The money, name and subsequent enthusiasm will move NYU to the top half dozen schools.”

West Robinson, a finance student interviewed by an intrepid Oppy reporter named Tom Hoffman, echoed Altman’s sentiment:

“I think that about half the other top schools have names associated with them, like Duke’s Fuqua, and MIT’s Sloan and I think it will help us move to the top five … I think we should be number three or four by 1995, that’s my prediction,” he told the newspaper.

“It’s not a wimp name, it’s very solid and sounds like we can build an image behind it.”

Associate Professor of Management Communications Christine Kelly worried that there may be some drawback in getting people to use the name.

“Will it end up like the Kellogg School at Northwestern?” she asked.

One student, who preferred to remain anonymous in the article, was less than pleased with the name change.

“I think it’s obnoxious that when people give a contribution to a school they have to get something in return like having their name put on the school,” he said.

“I don’t think Leonard Stern’s name should be on it.”

Stern was born in 1938 in New York. At 19, he graduated with honors from the then NYU School of Commerce, and then went on to receive his MBA from the then GBA two years later.

Sterns father, Max Stern, emigrated to the U.S. from Germany in the early 1930s, along with about 1,200 canaries. He went on to found the Hartz Mountain Corporation, which grew from a modest birdseed business into a pet food and supplies powerhouse.