College of Arts and Sciences Executive Thinking Program Records
Scope and Contents note
The Executive Thinking Program collection includes correspondence, course materials, enrollment lists, Father OBrien's typed and handwritten manuscripts, publicity brochures and newspaper articles. Other materials include audio tapes, What's New In The Schoolhouse (from KOMO radio), Creative Communication by Thomas L. O'Brien, SJ, index cards naming enrolled executives, photographs, speeches, and reports. The bulk of the material cover 1960-1968 when Father O'Brien was director.
Dates
- Creation: 1948-1984
- Creation: Majority of material found within 1958 - 1970
Creator
- Seattle University. Executive Thinking Program (Organization)
Conditions Governing Access note
The collection is open for research.
Biographical/Historical note
The Executive Thinking Program, offered at Seattle University from 1958-1968, was directed by Thomas J. O'Brien, SJ chair of the undergraduate Honors Program. The curriculum was patterned after similar seminars offered at Harvard University and in Aspen, Colorado. The program was a non-credit seminar for Seattle area business and professional leaders designed to hone their skills in communication, analyzing complex ideas, and to supplement their knowledge of economics, politics and ethical thought. The annual program emphasized culture and thought over management training skills. The seminar reading list centered on the Great Books, the Jesuit Ratio Studiorum, the Upanishads and Hindu philosophy, the Bible, Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Newton, Descartes, Lock, Hegel, Marx and others. Participants engaged in dialogue with an emphasis on active listening to the ideas and opinions of others. The overall goal of the seminar was to promote a deeper understanding of self in order to create a more integrated and purposeful human being. Tuition was paid by firms employing the participants, including Seattle Trust and Savings Bank, Western Gear Corporation, Hydraulic Manufacturing Company, PACCAR, Sicks' Rainier Brewing Company, Overlake Transit Company, John Doyle Bishop Inc., Bell Telephone Company, Puget Sound Power and Light Company, Sears Roebuck, Western Hotels, Seattle First National Bank, and Boeing Airplane Company. When Father O'Brien was reassigned to San Francisco in 1968 the program languished. An initiative to revive the Executive Thinking Program at Seattle University in 1982, under Sister Rosaleen Trainor, CSJ was unsuccessful.
Extent
4 Linear Feet (4 boxes)
Language of Materials
English
Abstract
The Executive Thinking Program, offered at Seattle University from 1958-1968, was a non-credit seminar designed for Seattle area business and professional leaders to hone their skills in communication, analyzing complex ideas, and to supplement their knowledge of economics, politics, and ethical thought. The collection includes correspondence, course materials, enrollment lists, typed and handwritten manuscripts of program director Thomas L. O'Brien, SJ , photographs, publicity brochures, newspaper articles and audio tapes.
Subject
- PACCAR (Organization)
- KOMO (Radio station : Seattle, Wash.) (Organization)
- O'Brien, Thomas L., SJ (Person)
- Boeing Airplane Company (Organization)
- Seattle University. College of Arts and Sciences (Organization)
- Bell Telephone Company (Organization)
- Sears, Roebuck and Company (Organization)
- Seattle University. Executive Thinking Program (Organization)
- Western International Hotels (Organization)
- Sicks' Rainier Brewing Company (Organization)
- Title
- Guide to the College of Arts and Sciences Executive Thinking Program Records
- Author
- Jeff Winter and Mary Linden Sepulveda
- Date
- 2011
- Description rules
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
- Language of description
- Undetermined
- Script of description
- Code for undetermined script
- Language of description note
- English
- Sponsor
- Funding for preparing the finding aid was provided through a grant awarded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.
Repository Details
Part of the Seattle University, Lemieux Library and McGoldrick Learning Commons, Special Collections Repository