Adams Hall

Adams Hall. . This building is named for Arthur Barto Adams, the first dean of the College of Business Administration. Adams was born in Union County, South Carolina on January 24, 1887, and studied at the University of South Carolina and at Columbia. He came to the University of Oklahoma in the fall of 1913 to teach economics in the new School of Commerce and Industry in the College of Arts and Sciences. During his tenure here, Adams helped to build the business school into one of the largest colleges of the university. When the School was renamed the School of Public and Private Business in 1917, Adams was made its director, and it grew vastly under his leadership. It became independent from the College of Arts and Sciences in 1923. In 1925 the School was granted membership in the American Association of Collegiate Schools of Business, and in 1929 it became the College of Business Administration, again with Adams as its dean. , In addition to supervising the business school, Adams also started the Bureau of Business Research in 1927, and served during a leave of absence as a member of the Federal Trade Commission. Adams retired as dean of the College of Business Administration on September 1, 1948 and was given the title Regents Professor of Economics. He continued in this role until 1957. , In 1935, the state legislature appropriated $250,000 for the construction of a business administration building, which was completed the next year. It was later named Adams Hall in honor of Dean Adams. He left behind a strong tradition of business education at the University of Oklahoma, which ranks in the top ten universities in the country in the number of executives of major U.S. corporations which it has trained.