Carlton A Pederson

Who was Carlton A Pederson?

Carlton Pederson was born in Grand Forks, North Dakota on November 5, 1910. He

attended elementary and high school in Grand Forks and graduated from the University of North

Dakota with a B.S. degree in Commerce in 1934. During his school years he worked part-time

as a steamfitter in his father's plumbing and heating business. After graduation he worked for

the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, State of North Dakota. After a year with the

FERA, he worked for a wholesale grocery firm as an accountant and later as a sales

representative. He then attended the University of Southern California, where he received his

MBA Degree in 1937.

Professor Pederson taught at San Bernardino High School for one year. From 1938 until

1942, he served as an Instructor and Assistant Professor at San Jose State College while working

on his PhD Degree in Business at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

From 1943 to 1946 he was the Director of Education and Training with Lockheed

Aircraft Corporation in Burbank, California. He received the Ph.D. Degree in Business at

Stanford in 1946.

Professor Pederson joined the faculty of the Stanford Graduate School of Business in

1946. In his early years on the faculty he was in charge of the School's placement activities and

was the founding secretary of the Stanford Business School Alumni Association. In 1955-56 he

served as Associate Dean of the School under J. Hugh Jackson, and in 1956-58 he served as

Acting Dean of the School. While he was Acting Dean he also organized the school's first Long-

Range Planning Committee and served as its Chairman in 1958. This Committee laid much of

the groundwork for improvements in the Graduate School of Business which have brought it to

its leadership position among business schools.

Later, as Associate Dean (1959-65) under the new dean (Ernest Arbuckle), "Bud" helped

to implement many of the plans developed by the Long-Range Planning Committee he had

earlier helped organize. In 1962 he received the Mead Johnson Foundation Professorship Award

-- a ten-year fellowship which was created for him and provided support which enabled him to

devote considerable time to research on general management.