George Leland (Lee) Bach

George Leland (Lee) Bach is regarded as one of the leading figures in the evolution of U.S. business education, credited with playing a key role in its revolution during the 1960s and 70s. He was the founding dean of the Tepper School of Business, chairman of the Department of Economics, and Maurice Falk Professor of Economics and Social Science. As dean, he helped establish the Tepper School as one of the nation’s leading business schools.

Bach served in a number of roles at the Federal Reserve, the U.S. Department of Commerce, and the Treasury, as well as consulting on economic planning and executive development for leading industrial firms, the Ford and Sloan Foundations, and the Carnegie Corp of New York.

He published numerous articles in the fields of money and banking, inflation, economic policy, executive development, and business and economic education, and was the author of 14 books, including one of the most widely-used economics textbooks.

Born in Iowa, Bach earned his undergraduate degree from Grinnell College in 1936, then studied law for a year before earning his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago in 1940. He taught briefly at Iowa State before moving to the Federal Reserve in 1941 where he quickly became a senior economist.

In 1946, at just 31, he was named principal economist at the U.S. Department of Commerce. Later that year, Bach was recruited by Carnegie Tech. He left in 1962 for Stanford University where he remained until his retirement in 1983.

Among his honors, Bach was awarded the Bower Medal for distinguished education and the Dow Jones Award for contributions to economic education.

He was also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The Tepper School MBA program’s annual teaching award, the “George Leland Bach Award for Excellence in Teaching,” was named in his honor.