“He replied that as a startup, we had to admit the best, strongest class and weed out the weakest students,” Colley says. “I decided to come to Darden that day.” Friend of the Students Although he expected excellence in the classroom, Colley helped set a friendly and informal tone for faculty-student interaction at Darden that continues to the present day. Coming from a graduate program where students were “scared to death” of their professors, Colley did not so much break down walls between faculty and students as he simply failed to erect any. He left his door open at all hours, rarely missed First Coffee, joined students at their parties, called them at home to make sure they understood the day’s case, and took all comers who would challenge Professor Alec Horniman and him on the Memorial Gymnasium basketball court. On the latter point, Colley says he would regularly challenge students to foul-shooting competitions, with the loser buying lunch, and claims to have lost to only one student ever. “It was just a way of putting a little humanity into things,” Colley says of his time spent with students outside of the classroom. “Taking out some of the rigor.” The upshot of that kind of contagious devotion to students was generations of young people who graduated from the School with a special bond with Darden and Colley. Many repaid their thanks by returning to Colley’s classes to teach and share lessons from the real world and by donating to scholarships or other initiatives in Colley’s honor. Speaking at a recent Darden event honoring Colley and his efforts to bolster the Darden Jefferson Fellowships, John Macfarlane (MBA ’79) noted that while he had “the misfortune” of never taking a course with Colley, the professor nevertheless “learned my name and my personal interests along with those of virtually all of my classmates.”
Macfarlane, who went on to become a devoted contributor to Darden and UVA, said he struck up a 40-year friendship with Colley, and routinely sought his counsel in subsequent years. “I think it’s fair to say that even Charlie Abbott could not have anticipated the extent to which John Colley contributed to the University,” said MacFarlane. Darden Professor Jacquie Doyle (MBA ’89) is among those who cite the Colley influence as formative for her professional life. After her first year at Darden, Doyle spent her summer as a research assistant for Colley, writing cases and working on various projects. As her MBA career drew to a close, Doyle says Colley suggested she consider Darden’s Ph.D. program. She listened, and Colley later served as her dissertation chair. After teaching at the UVA McIntire School of Commerce, Doyle returned to Darden at Colley’s urging and began a process she likens to something of an apprenticeship in Operations and General Management instruction. “He taught, then we co-taught, then I taught and he started sitting in the back of the room like the color commentator on Monday Night Football,” Doyle says. “I was the professor, but he had all the stories and experience.” Doyle says that arrangement carried on for roughly 15 years. Eventually, the former student took the baton on onetime Colley-led courses, including the perennially popular “General Managers Taking Action” and “Reading Seminars in Management,” both of which routinely bring Colley’s former students back to Darden to teach. Now roughly three decades into a professional collaboration, Doyle says her career lends credence to the notion that “once you work for John Colley, you always work for John Colley.”
DARDEN THROUGH THE YEARS 1970 — Professor
Eleanor May becomes Darden’s first female faculty member.
1972 — David Epps 1972 — C. Stewart (left) and Lemuel Lewis (right) become the School’s first two African-American graduates.
Eleanor May
24
THE DARDEN REPORT
Sheppard becomes the second dean of the Darden School. His tenure included overseeing the growth of the residential MBA student body from 240 to 480 and naming the School the Colgate Darden Graduate School of Business.
C. Stewart Sheppard
1975 — The School
moves from Monroe Hall on Central Grounds to a new home on North Grounds
Monroe Hall
1977 — Efforts to
attract more women to the School begin to take flight, with women comprising 25 percent of the School’s First Year class.
70s Women