THOMAS J.C. RAYMOND, LONGTIME PROFESSOR AT HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL AND HARVARD UNIVERSITY EXTENSION SCHOOL, DEAD AT 88
A renowned authority on business writing, he taught legendary course to generations of Harvard MBAs
|
| Thomas J.C. Raymond (1917-2005) Photo: Brooks Kraft |
BOSTON -— Harvard Business School Professor Emeritus Thomas J.C. Raymond, who taught a legendary writing course that thousands of Harvard MBA students regarded as one of the most valuable parts of their HBS education after they had graduated and put his lessons into practice in the workplace, died at Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis on Sept. 29. He was 88 years old.
A longtime member of the faculties at HBS, Harvard College, and the Harvard University Division of Continuing Education, Raymond was an early champion of teaching business communication through HBS’s famous case method model. In his more than 50 years of teaching, an estimated 18,000 students benefited from his expertise. Raymond taught at Harvard Business School from 1950 until his retirement in 1987, chairing the Written Analysis of Cases (WAC) course, which required all first-year students in the MBA Program to submit biweekly papers that had a strict Saturday night deadline. A plaque on the side of the School’s Baker Library now marks the spot where students hurried to drop their papers into a chute before it was shut tight at the final toll of the campus bell at 9 p.m.
Although many students bristled under WAC’s regimen, they later valued the course for the discipline it fostered while developing their ability to express themselves clearly and cogently. “For decades, MBA students benefited from the structure and discipline of Tom Raymond’s legendary course,” said Stephen A. Greyser, the School’s Richard P.Chapman Professor of Business Administration Emeritus. “While many students feared the course,the vast majority recognized its value for the rest of their business careers. Tom was wonderfully devoted to his students and those who worked with him.”
“WAC is the course that older reunion classes remember the most,” added Ray Goldberg, the George M. Moffett Professor of Agriculture and Business Emeritus at HBS. “In retrospect, they were all grateful that they had to take it. Tom Raymond’s leadership—along with his sense of humor—played a pivotal role in the course’s success.” In fact, one 25th Reunion class at HBS voted Written Analysis of Cases the most valuable course they had taken at the School.
Born in Newark, New Jersey, on June 19, 1917, Thomas Joseph Cicchino Raymond graduated from Montclair State Teachers College in 1942. His liking for the discussion method of teaching developed after he had attended a course at HBS during World War II. Stationed in Miami, Florida, with the U.S. Army Air Corps, he applied and was accepted to train at the Army’s Statistical School at HBS. After serving in the South Pacific and rising to the rank of captain, he returned to Harvard for an MBA degree.
Raymond’s progression from HBS student to HBS professor was somewhat circuitous. Receiving his MBA in 1947, he earned a doctorate a decade later at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, intending to become a school superintendent in suburban Boston. However, a member of a local school board who also happened to be an HBS professor encouraged him to put his training to use by teaching communication at the Business School. Raymond accepted the challenge, and after a successful year in the classroom, he was encouraged to remain at Soldiers Field.
His approach to business communication proved beneficial in the nonprofit sector as well. Beginning in 1970, he was active in training museum directors, managers of performing arts companies, and trustees of these organizations as educational director of Harvard University’s Institute in Arts Administration. He also conducted training programs for executives of United Way, the Easter Seal Society, Girl Scouts of America, and various other human services agencies.
Asked by the then U.S. Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach to train police chiefs in the case method, Raymond ran programs on the HBS campus for a number of years for chiefs of the country’s largest metropolitan areas.
From 1969 to 1986, Raymond divided his time between the Harvard Business School and the Harvard Yard, teaching a general management course to undergraduates called Business in American Life. The course required each student to set up a small business as a research project—an exercise that eventually led several of them to launch successful ventures. In the 1970s and 1980s, Raymond and his wife, Alicia Margarita (Gutierrez), were resident tutors and associates of Quincy House. They also maintained a relationship with Mather House.
In 1980, Raymond brought his talents and skills to the University’s Division of Continuing Education (commonly known as the Harvard University Extension School), where he began teaching the popular course Effective Written Communication in the then-new Certificate of Special Studies in Administration and Management Program. A highly regarded and honored teacher at the Extension School for 25 years, Raymond continued to teach his course until last spring, although he was by then confined to a wheelchair in class.
The Extension School awarded him the Joann Fussa Distinguished Teaching Award in 1989 and last spring recognized him for his remarkable quarter century of service with these words: “Professor Raymond teaches by asking questions, then more questions. Using case studies, he leads students beyond assumptions and easy generalities. The process challenges students to confront their preconceived notions. His goal is to make students truly think and understand, so that they will, in his words, ‘have something to say rather than just have to say something.’”
In 1994, Harvard Business School honored him with a Distinguished Service Award in recognition of his “outstanding service to the School and to the field of business education.”
Raymond was the author or coauthor of numerous articles on business communication and of three books, Problems in Business Administration: Analysis by the Case Method, Casebook in Arts Administration, and Managerial Communication.
Beyond the classroom, he enjoyed opera, organ music, cooking, and theater. For many years, he helped his wife manage two children’s clothing stores she had launched in Lexington and Orleans. “I tend to the books,” he said in a 1994 interview, “while Alicia does the buying and promotional work. Business communication is definitely one of our strong points.” A resident of Boston, Cambridge, and Wellesley for many years, he retired to Orleans in 1988.
Besides his wife, Raymond is survived by his stepson, Geoffrey B. Clark of Princeton, NJ (MBA 1983); four brothers, Dr. Joseph Raymond of Pacific Palisades, Calif., Vincent Raymond of South Bend, Ind., Charles Raymond of Scottsdale, Ariz., and Robert Raymond of Los Angeles; two grandchildren; and many nieces and nephews.