The Bentley Buzz

4.  For his 65th birthday, students, alumni, faculty and staff threw a surprise party for Harry, where alumni gifted him a portrait by renowned local painter Charles S. Hopkinson.

5.  Jennie Belle Bentley, Harry Bentley’s wife, was instrumental in the early success of the Bentley School, handling the school’s finances and marketing initiatives. Jennie was responsible for creating and publishing pamphlets to advertise Bentley’s academic offerings, which helped to keep enrollment steady throughout the Great Depression.

6.  Henry Rauch was a graduate of the evening Class of 1924, but his association with Bentley started well before then. While he was a student at the Boston High School of Commerce in 1918, Henry Rauch was a jack of all trades, working to enroll students, answer phones and collect tuition from students. An original member of the board of trustees, Henry Rauch served for 30 years, which included seven years as the board’s chair. He was awarded Bentley’s first honorary degree in 1980 and was the first in our history to make a $1 million donation.

7.  When he wasn’t educating the future accountants of the 20th century, Harry Bentley liked to take in Boston Braves baseball games, attend the opera and practice gymnastics. (Rumor has it he’d let class out early on the Braves’ opening day)

8.  Bentley originally only enrolled male students, but briefly admitted a cohort of female students throughout the First World War to bolster enrollment. The school became coeducational in 1942 during World War II.  

17.  When second president Maurice Lindsay wasn’t busy helping Bentley to secure accreditation to grant bachelor’s degrees or starting a student investment club on campus, he frequently spent time painting and even auctioned his work off to raise money for Bentley’s scholarship fund.

18.  Third president Thomas Morison was notable for his efforts to relocate Bentley from 921 Boylston Street in Boston to our Waltham campus, but in his spare time he was known to be a masterful pinochle player. He would entertain alumni and prospective donors over matches of the card game.

19.  Gregory Adamian was the second longest-serving president after Harry Bentley, overseeing the growth of Bentley’s reputation across the country for 21 years. With such notable growth in his years as president, he’s often referred to as Bentley's second founder. Long before and after his presidency, Adamian was a fixture on campus, attending every commencement ceremony from 1955 to 2015.

20.  Originally a professor of law since first joining Bentley in 1955, by the time President Adamian retired in 1991, enrollment had doubled and our endowment had grown from less than $500,000 to $60 million.

21.  Like President Lindsay, Bentley’s fifth president Joseph Cronin was an avid painter and was known to paint scenes from faculty and staff honeymoon photos as wedding gifts.

22.  Marion Graham Willis was the first full-time female faculty member, first joining Bentley in 1961. In 1974, she became the first female professor to receive tenure and continued to teach until retiring 20 years later.

23.  Tony Bonaparte was Bentley’s first Black vice president and the first academic vice president to also serve as provost. Born in Grenada and raised in Trinidad and Tobago, Tony served as provost and vice president for academic affairs from 1985 to 1989 and played an integral role in Bentley’s effort to earn accreditation from the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. He was also responsible for launching Bentley’s first Center for International Education.

24.  Susan Schwab was Bentley’s first female vice president, when in 1991 she was named vice president of information systems. Throughout the 1990s, she bolstered Bentley’s use of technology in the classroom, which helped establish Bentley as the “business school for the information age” under sixth president Joseph Morone.

25.  Bertha Stratton was a longtime administrator at Bentley, having served for 30 years before retiring in 1948 as the secretary of the college. Bertha was a student of Harry Bentley’s dating back to his days teaching at Simmons College in 1909. Stratton House on Beaver Street bears her name and was originally an all-women’s dormitory, which housed an oil painting of Bertha. Adding to Bentley ties, the painting was done by Joan Smith, wife of Robinson Smith, an associate professor of history.

26.  E. William Dandes’ commitment to Bentley ran deep. He was a graduate of the Class of 1947, became a professor of accounting in 1949, and was the founder of the Falcon Society, Bentley’s highest ranking honor society. He later served as the vice president for academic affairs and the founding director of the graduate school. (There’s also a room dedicated to him at the top of Adamian)

27.  In 1961, the Bentley School of Accounting and Finance officially became Bentley College of Accounting and Finance when we gained approval to grant four-year degrees.

28.  The need for more space accompanied by the commotion caused by the construction of the Prudential Center along Boylston Street resulted in the eventual move to Waltham in 1968. 72% of students surveyed preferred a suburban campus to accommodations in the city.

29.  An observatory was built on campus in 1974 and was a popular attraction on student tours. The observatory stood in the area across from the library that would later become the Adamian Academic Center. In fact, the original dome from the observatory is still on campus atop Adamian, but the telescope is no longer active.  

30.  The library has been a focal point of campus since Bentley first moved to Waltham, but the iconic clocktower wasn’t installed until a few years later. The clocktower was installed in 1972 thanks to a generous gift from alumnus Solomon Baker ’24.

31.  The original falcon statue was a gift from the Class of 1971, and you can still see it on campus today located just outside of the Dana Center.

32.  The Waltham campus originally consisted of 12 buildings. Spaces like Adamian, Smith, the student center and Rauch — as well as most of the residence halls — all came later.    

33.  1971 brought with it more growth of academic offerings and new degrees, prompting us to drop the “accounting and finance” from our official title to simply "Bentley College."

34.  We’d change one last time in 2008 to our beloved "Bentley University," following the addition of doctoral programs under President Gloria Larson.

35.  The falcon statue was replaced with an updated version in 2017 to commemorate the centennial celebration, and the work of art is in good company. The artist, Robert Shure, is also behind the famous FAO Schwartz teddy bear statue as well as the profile of George Washington at the Washington Monument.

36.  The Trading Room is a central part of upper campus, but it was originally located in the Adamian Academic Center before the construction of the Smith Center was completed in 2000.

37.  The iconic footbridge over Beaver Street is a welcome sign that you’re on campus. But the connecting piece wasn’t always a fixture on campus — construction of the bridge was completed in 1989.

38.  In 1999, Bentley acquired additional land off of Beaver Street from DeVincent Farm, which led the way for the development of 33 acres of new athletic fields. That new land acquisition meant that the old athletic fields could be relocated, and new dorms were constructed in their place with the addition of the Copley North and Copley South residence halls.

39.  In 1985, Bentley became one of the first schools in the country to give incoming students portable computers (even if they were a bit more cumbersome than today’s models). The decision made national headlines.

45.  With such a pristine campus, it’s no wonder why students prefer to live in residence halls as opposed to off campus. Since 1982, more students have lived on campus than commuted.

46.  Today, Bentley students work in fields of all kinds ranging from the film industry and nonprofits to cryptocurrency and entrepreneurial endeavors. But there’s no secret that our roots were firmly planted in the field of accounting. So much so that in 1950, a staggering 40% of CPAs in Massachusetts were Bentley alumni!

47.  To commemorate our 75th anniversary, President Cronin created the Founder’s Day Award to recognize and celebrate a staff member who has made a significant, positive impact on our community. The distinction in honor of Harry Bentley continues to be given out each year.

48.  Bentley has long been committed to sustainability, and recently became one of the first schools in the country to pledge to be carbon neutral by 2030.

49.  The 76,000 square foot Bentley Arena collects 40% of its power from solar energy thanks to the rooftop of solar panels, and 20% of the materials used in construction of the building were from locally sourced recyclables.

50.  The staircase running from the Greenspace to upper campus is heated to make traversing campus (slightly) easier in New England winters.

What's your favorite interesting fact about Bentley's history, campus or otherwise? Send them our way!

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In honor of this issue's look back at Bentley's past, we felt it was appropriate to have this week's Featured Falcon be someone whose ties to Bentley run deep, leading us to Facilities Coordinator Roy Mogan (and by extension, his entire family). Roy has worked in Facilities at Bentley for 35 years, and his wife Nivia has worked in Enrollment Services for 33 years. Both graduated from Bentley in 1999, and both of their daughters are proud Falcon alumni as well! Jacqueline graduated in 2016 and Lindsey graduated in 2020, completing the quadruple Falcon sweep. Get to know a bit more about Roy below. 

Title: Facilities Coordinator 
Favorite spot on campus: New Smith quad area
Favorite place to grab a bite to eat on campus: Before Covid, I would spread my time between the FDR, Einstein’s, Currito’s, 921 and the lower café.
Favorite snack: Jack Links Beef Jerky
Favorite television show: On Amazon Prime - Reacher
Favorite movie: 2022 - Prey
Hidden talent: I enjoy meeting people. I know half the campus and my wife knows the other half.
Favorite Bentley memory: Meeting President Chrite, his wife Phyllis and their lovely family at Inauguration 2022.
What are you looking forward to this academic year: I am looking forward to having the campus full again and all events back to normal.