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IN MEMORIAM
Richard Holton
E. T. Grether Professor of Marketing, Emeritus
Dean, Haas School of Business
Berkeley
1926—2005
Richard H. Holton was the E. T. Grether Professor of Marketing, Emeritus and, from 1967 to 1975, dean of the Walter A. Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. Dean Holton, who joined the UC Berkeley faculty in 1957, was a leader in the fields of marketing, international business and entrepreneurship and left a lasting imprint in these areas at the Haas School. Throughout his career, Dean Holton focused on teaching, campus leadership and public service. On leave from the campus from 1963 to 1965, he served as U.S. assistant secretary of commerce. He was thoughtful, considerate, self-effacing, devoted to the greater good of the school and the University, and always alert toward the welfare of colleagues, friends, and family. He was also known for his good stories to liven an occasion, and to soften conflict in an organizational setting.
Holton grew up in the small town of London, Ohio. He attended Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1947 with honors in economics. At Miami, he met Constance Minzey, whom he married in 1947. The couple moved to Columbus, Ohio, where he earned a master's degree in economics at Ohio State University. He then enrolled in the doctoral program in economics at Harvard University. He was a resident tutor in Adams House at Harvard, with Constance (Connie), during several years of his graduate studies.
From 1951 to 1952, Holton was assistant director of marketing projects at the Social Science Research Center at the University of Puerto Rico. His work there led to his 1955 monograph, "Marketing Efficiency in Puerto Rico," written with the late J. K. Galbraith and others. He also was coauthor, with Richard Caves, of another study, "The Canadian Economy: Prospect and Retrospect" (1959).
He was assistant professor of economics at Harvard from 1953 to 1957, and in 1957 he came to UC Berkeley as an associate professor in the School of Business Administration (later renamed the Haas School of Business). Holton became director of the Berkeley campus's Institute of Business and Economics Research in 1959. He reorganized it to reflect the growing interest in business science. His own research resulted in a steady flow of publications in marketing policies and competition.
From 1962 to 1963, he served as special assistant to the U.S. Secretary of Commerce. President John F. Kennedy appointed him assistant secretary of commerce in February 1963, and he served until February 1965. Holton's continuing interest in consumer protection resulted in a year's appointment by President Lyndon B. Johnson as chairman of the President's Consumer Advisory Council. He also served from 1968 to 1972 as chairman of the Public Advisory Committee on Truth in Lending Regulations of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.
In 1967, Holton became dean of the School of Business Administration at UC Berkeley. During his tenure, he fostered stronger relationships with business leaders, and served on numerous advisory boards of business organizations. He is widely credited with launching some of the current distinctive capabilities of the Haas School in entrepreneurship and international affairs, and its part-time M.B.A. program. As dean, he also initiated a system of student ratings of all courses at the Haas School, a practice still used today to gauge teaching effectiveness and improve courses over time.
In 1970, Holton started a course in entrepreneurship and business development, one of the first such courses at any business school, enlisting a widely-experienced entrepreneur and Haas School alumnus, Leo Helzel, to co-teach the course. This association led to new support for research and teaching in entrepreneurship, and the formation, with contributions from Williams-Sonoma Chairman Howard Lester, of the Haas School's Lester Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. His work with the program in entrepreneurship and innovation helped to generate the school's immensely popular annual business plan competitions. He is also credited with developing the school's first curriculum for international business studies, another key element of the school's current academic programs.
To reach an important new group of students, in 1972 Dean Holton initiated a part-time M.B.A. Program in San Francisco to serve qualified candidates who wanted to gain the benefits of a management degree but were not able to leave their jobs for a full-time M.B.A. program. That program has since evolved into the Berkeley Evening & Weekend M.B.A. Program, which now enrolls more students than does the full-time M.B.A. program; it is now offered on the Berkeley campus and in Silicon Valley. It has accommodated the steadily growing demand by students for a top-ranked management education on a part-time schedule.
In 1981, Holton expanded on a longtime personal interest in international business when he became dean of visiting faculty of the newly established National Center for Industrial Science and Technology Management Development, which was part of the Dalian Institute of Technology in the People's Republic of China. Holton and his wife commuted between Berkeley and Dalian for the following five years, while he continued his regular faculty duties at UC Berkeley. Between 1980 and 1992, Holton wrote a number of articles on the emergence of a modern, market-based economy in China, writing about international joint ventures and their financing, China's state planning as compared to market-driven behavior, economic reform of the distribution sector of China, and China's prospects as an industrialized country. He also coedited a book, United States-China Relations (University of California Press, 1989). Holton traveled extensively in China and led California Alumni Association-sponsored Bear Trek trips there.
Holton was awarded the Berkeley Citation, the campus's highest honor, at his retirement in 1991. Even after his retirement, for three years until spring of 2005, when his health began to fail, he taught a freshman seminar, "The Economic Development of Modern China".
Holton kept taped to his desk lamp at home a quote from Thomas Carlyle, reflecting Holton's belief in his calling as an educator: "There is nothing more fearsome than ignorance in action." Holton's love for the campus community was expressed in his enthusiasm for Cal Bears football, his participation in a campus photography club, and his membership in the all-male Monks Chorus, a group of faculty, alumni and others with campus ties who, clad as Franciscan monks, perform at The Faculty Club Christmas feast. Holton joined the Monks (whose history goes back to 1902) in the early 1960s, and sang bass.
Holton loved the mountains, and took every opportunity to take backpacking trips in the Sierra Nevada. He often made these trips with his friend and colleague of more than 40 years, Fred Balderston, an emeritus UC Berkeley professor at the Haas School.
A generous philanthropist and devoted member of public interest organizations, within a year of moving to Berkeley Holton joined the board of directors of the Consumers Cooperative of Berkeley. His board membership with Alta Bates Hospital spanned nearly four decades. He was to be named a 2006 recipient of the Distinguished Service Award from the Alta Bates Summit Foundation. He also served on the board of the Berkeley Public Library Foundation, the Council of Better Business Bureaus, The World Affairs Council of Northern California, and the board of trustees at Mills College. He and his family shared a longtime commitment to the Point Reyes peninsula and the village of Inverness, California.
As his health failed, he was surrounded by his wife and children. He died peacefully at home in Berkeley on Monday, October 24, 2005, after battling cancer and Parkinson’s disease. Holton is survived by Constance, his wife of nearly 60 years; brother, David, of Washington, D.C.; daughters, Melissa Holton, of Moss Landing and Inverness, and Jane Kriss, of Inverness; son, Tim, of Berkeley; and three grandchildren.
Raymond Miles
Frederick Balderston