This month, CMC loses two of its cherished professors to retirement: Gordon Bjork and Steve Smith.

Bjork, the Johnathon B. Lovelace Professor of Economics, has taught at the College for more than 25 years, developing a reputation on campus as a bit of a maverick. “Part of being a maverick is that I’ve always liked to be involved in a wide variety of things,” Professor Bjork once said. “I’m sometimes criticized by colleagues for being a generalist. The trend in contemporary economics is to focus on one small area and devote all of your time to it.”

Professor Bjork was the first in his family to attend college, turning down Harvard and Yale to attend Dartmouth, where he won the senior oratory prize for criticizing the college’s educational policies, and where he also won a Rhodes Scholarship. While in England he also met his future wife, Susan.

Bjork received a Ph.D. in economics in 1963 from the University of Washington and was an associate professor of economics at Columbia’s Graduate School of Business during the tumultuous mid-1960s, when campus riots were erupting. “I was part of the faculty group that was trying to hold the campus together,” he told a CMC Profile writer in 1987. “The administration of the university had very little notion what was going on in the minds of the students and faculty. Out of that came my resolve to become a dean or a president, to bring a greater understanding of these new forces.”

At the young age of 32 he got his wish, becoming president of Linfield College in Oregon.

He returned to the classroom and joined CMC in 1975, when intellectual fate played a hand. Asked to coordinate a seminar for the California Bankers’ Association, Professor Bjork became interested in simulation exercises used to train bankers. That interest led to the creation of Economics 136: Theory and Practice of Commercial Banking, or as students called it, BankSim. As its director, Professor Bjork was pleased that the course provided students, many with no previous banking experience, with realistic insights to the overall operation of a bank.

Later, with professors John Roth and Ward Elliott, Professor Bjork helped develop a tutorial in politics, philosophy, and economics, modeled on the Oxford method---and the PPE program was born, serving an average of 10 to 12 students per year.

Professor Bjork is the author of four books on macroeconomic issues, including The Way it Worked and Why it Doesn’t: Structural Change and the Decline of the U.S. Growth, and has contributed to 10 others. He was twice honored by Freedoms Foundation for his BankSim program, receiving the Foundation’s George Washington Honor Medal for distinguished achievement in economic education.

Last fall, he was appointed to the Environmental Protection Agency’s National Advisory Council on Environmental Policy and Technology, where he is not only the sole economist, but also the only representative from California. He also designed his family’s Oregon vacation home, a two-story, pine-interior and steel-sheathed getaway that the whole family pitched in to build.

Asked once how he was perceived on campus, Professor Bjork replied, “I’m always viewed as a liberal, although I’m a registered Republican. I’m a social liberal and an economic conservative. I don’t think I peddle a particular point of view in my classes, but I deliberately try to make students see both sides of an issue.

“Students need to see how the world works," he says, "before they set out to change some specific part of it."

Professor Gordon Bjork, 1979.

“Gordon was the true founder of PPE, the most demanding of its instructors, its organizing genius, and its heart and soul. He was the one who learned the Oxford tutorial method at its fountainhead and adapted it brilliantly to the needs of an American college. He was the one who never missed a class, never took a semester off, taught every PPE graduate, started every semester with a written assignment, wasn't above switching the two sides just before a debate, and never lost a chance to put people on the spot in an instructive way. He has been our principal recruiter, scheduler, provisioner, and bringer-in of interesting outsiders. He has also been the one who takes the kids on adventures outside of class, camping above the clouds, climbing mountains, skiing down them, biking over them, rafting through them, always at the head of the pack, and gathering everyone for dinner afterward with conversation like fine wine. He was the one who made the Yale Law School look like dessert after a robust educational main course. He's the main reason why PPE graduates think they have had the best education in the world, and why it's just possible that they could be right.”
Ward Elliott, Burnet C. Wohlford Professor of American Political Institutions

“Without Gordon Bjork, CMC would have no PPE program. He initiated the idea, recruited Ward Elliott and me to help him with it, and for years has been the program's champion. Gordon's devotion to the PPE program has benefitted CMC immensely. Its seminar and tutorial formats reflect his "signature," which involves asking penetrating questions and encouraging reasoned analysis and debate about them."
Jonathan Roth, Edward J. Sexton Professor of Philosophy

“Professor Bjork taught me about more than just economics. He taught me a method of inquiry and critical approach that I could carry with me to other subject matter and areas of my life . . . He became a grandfatherly figure to all of his students in PPE. During the job-hunt process he kept close tabs on us and was there to offer advice and support when we needed it. He was available both in and out of office hours. He enjoyed having us over at his house for PPE events and made a special effort to take us out to dinner in small groups during the semester. The time and attention he invested in his students made us feel respected and appreciated, and made us want to work even harder for him . . . He is tough but fair, demanding but compassionate. When he retires, CMC will be losing one of its hidden treasures.”
Megan Baesman '03