John P. ‘Jack’ Gould, renowned economist and former Chicago Booth dean, 1939-2024

John P. “Jack” Gould, the Steven G. Rothmeier Distinguished Service Professor of Economics Emeritus and former dean of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, died on Dec. 17. He was 85 years old. 

Gould, MBA’63, PhD’66, came to UChicago in 1961 to pursue his MBA and Ph.D. at the business school. Although he began teaching at Chicago Booth in 1965, he took leave in 1969 to work for the U.S. government. At the invitation of his mentor George P. Shultz—then U.S. secretary of labor and former Booth dean—he became special assistant for economic affairs at the U.S. Department of Labor under President Richard Nixon. Gould also served as a consultant for economic affairs to the Office of Management and Budget for the Executive Office of the President. 

Gould returned to Booth in 1970 and was only the second Ph.D. alum to be named dean. At the time, 44-year-old Gould told The New York Times: “I hope to have the opportunity to do the kinds of things that will keep the school in the innovative frontier.”

He did just that. 

“Over six-plus decades at Booth, from Ph.D. student to faculty member to dean, Jack left a profound and lasting impact on the school’s trajectory and helped cement its eminence as a top business school,” said Madhav Rajan, dean of Chicago Booth. 

Gould established the role of director of minority recruitment and encouraged admissions officers to visit high schools so they could plant the idea of a business education and career early. 

Additionally, he led Booth’s international expansion to Europe and introduced new ways of learning, including hands-on laboratory courses. He also paved the way for the downtown campus at Gleacher Center, a project he brought to University Trustees to expand the business school’s Chicago footprint. When it opened in 1994, the Gleacher Center improved the sense of community among the school’s Evening MBA students, giving them a central place to meet and foster connections. During his tenure, the Weekend MBA Program was introduced, attracting even more working professionals to the school’s downtown campus. 

It was Gould’s ability to lead while giving those who worked under him a sense of freedom that allowed for significant growth within the MBA programs, said Harry L. Davis, the Roger L. and Rachel M. Goetz Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Creative Management. Davis, a longtime colleague and friend, was asked by Gould to join the Deans’ Office as academic deputy dean in 1983. 

“He didn’t just delegate; he had the ability to roll up his sleeves at exactly the right time—and he didn’t micromanage,” Davis said. “He also always acknowledged others’ contributions.”

Former UChicago President Hanna Holborn Gray, the Harry Pratt Judson Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus, echoed this sentiment, describing Gould as unusually sensitive and considerate toward others. “Jack’s humane spirit, intellectual vitality, and personal kindness made him the best of colleagues and contributors to the life of our university,” she said. “Always generous in recognizing their achievements, he took pride in his colleagues’ success, seeing his decanal role in part as that of supporting and encouraging their careers and opportunities.” 

As dean, Gould told colleagues he needed to “rethink the mission” of the curriculum to include more of the soft skills that he felt were essential in the workplace. He formed a committee of both junior and senior professors to better understand what courses were needed for a business career. “He would say: ‘Let’s experiment. Let’s try things. We need to keep learning,’” Davis said.

Under his tenure, Gould supported Davis to start the Leadership Effectiveness and Development program (LEAD), which is now a required course for first-year students that builds their communication and team-building skills and helps them develop a personal approach to leadership. Additionally, Gould oversaw the introduction of entrepreneurial courses that he felt would serve as a hands-on road map for students interested in developing businesses. These courses later paved the way for the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at UChicago, which provides venture support and training for students interested in startups, venture capital, and private equity.

Gray praises Gould’s commitment to interdisciplinary education, citing his work with the university’s liberal arts program to create a summer course that offered a core introduction to the MBA, including quantitative studies. He saw it as an opportunity to introduce the idea of a business education to a broader range of students while they were still undergraduates. 

“He built an original model for an interdisciplinary scholarly community that forged connections between projects and fields of investigation not ordinarily linked together by professional schools elsewhere,” Gray said. “He believed that a broad educational background in the liberal arts and the skills it fostered could only enrich and strengthen those who would become MBA students and leaders in the world to which their degrees would take them.” 

Others close to Gould, including Davis, similarly attribute his broad interests—far beyond the field of economics—to his success. At one point, Davis remembers Gould bringing in Prof. David Bevington, a Shakespearean scholar at UChicago, to speak to a management class. “He had a diverse set of friends in the broader community and around the University, which led him to have a larger view of the world,” Davis said.

Kathleen Carpenter, Gould’s spouse, recalls his longtime interest in something that was far less academic. As an only child growing up in Cicero, Illinois, he would accompany his grandfather on trips to see magicians perform as part of vaudeville shows at some of the large Chicago theaters. It led to a lifelong interest in magic and friendships within the community. 

“To his parents’ great relief, he chose to attend college instead of becoming a professional magician,” Carpenter said. “He was an economist, but he always had a deck of cards in his pocket.” 

Gould is survived by Carpenter and his sons John and Jeffrey. 

—A version of this obituary was originally published on the Chicago Booth website.