History - 1960's
(Summary/Commentary)
If a one word summary of NAEB in the 1960’s were required, the
word would have to be transition. William S. Price, who had been
the first employee and was the well-established General manager of the
E&I Cooperative, died in December 1968 and was succeeded by F.
Gerard Perrine. The long and successful career of Bert C. Ahrens
as Executive Secretary of NAEB was drawing to a close as the decade
wound down and the board was discussing his succession. The Co-op
was growing rapidly and Marvin R. Sheere, who would later succeed Jerry
Perrine, and Neil D. Markee, who would succeed Bert Ahrens, were both
working with members representing the Co-op.
As the decade opened, the role of women
in society was changing and men were struggling to become comfortable
with a new reality and the vocabulary that went with it. The role
of purchasing on campus was changing as well. Although some still
saw purchasing as a gatekeeper protecting the institution’s
resources from threats external and internal, Dartmouth’s John
Rhilinger was already talking about how to effectively sell purchasing
on campus. The civil rights movement was gaining momentum in the
US and minority-purchasing professionals were beginning to gain
prominence outside the historically black segment of higher
education. The role of NAEB within higher education was changing
as well and becoming more specialized as NACUBO gained strength as the
professional association serving chief business officers. NAEB had
been a key player in the organization of NACUBO.
In the early 60’s, workshop
topics frequently included discussion of handling the choking blizzard
of business process paper that had accompanied the rapid growth of
higher education. Instant money check with order systems were
pioneered on campus by Hank Nelson the Purchasing Agent at Columbia
University. Dick Mooney had an easy to use “Short Form
Order” at Cal Tech that covered a majority of the orders placed on
his campus. At Cornell, Wally Rogers had a streamlined stores
system that was state of the art. But by 1967 the University of
Iowa’s Ainsley G. Burks had what may have been the first
rudimentary computerized system working and the seeds of revolution had
been planted.
In 1960, the Association published a
hard covered text expertly crafted by James J. Ritterskamp, Forrest L.
Abbot and Bert C. Ahrens that quickly became the standard text defining
purchasing in support of higher education. Before the end of the
decade, computerization and other changes had produced an
ever-increasing rate of change within the profession and had made it all
but impossible for a hard covered publication to stay
current.
As the decade closed, the
Association’s budget exceeded $100,000.00.
Related Files
1960 History PDF file (PDF File)
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