Services planned for former CSOM Dean Kelley
12-9-2004
A funeral Mass will be celebrated on Tuesday, Dec. 14, at 10 a.m. in St. Ignatius Church for Albert J. Kelley, dean of the Carroll School of Management from 1967 until 1978, who died in Arlington, Va. yesterday after a long illness. He was 80.
Visiting hours will be held on Monday from 4 to 7 p.m. at the McNamamra Funeral Home, 460 Washington St., Brighton.
Dr. Kelley, who was neither a businessman nor an academician when he accepted the position of dean of the University's then-named College of Business Administration, helped develop the once small and little known professional school into a top-flight academic entity.
During his tenure as dean, the School of Management adopted a new name, expanded its academic focus with an emphasis on technology, became co-educational, witnessed a marked upswing in the academic credentials of the school's undergraduate students, expanded the size and quality of faculty, and saw its graduate degree program upgraded and nationally accredited.
A native of Boston, Dr. Kelley was a 1945 graduate of the US Naval Academy. He served as a Navy aviator during the Korean War and later was a test pilot.
He came to Boston College from a career in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, where he had been deputy director of the NASA Electronics Research Center in Cambridge, Mass.
Academic Vice President and Dean of Faculties John J. Neuhauser, who succeeded Dr. Kelley as CSOM's dean in 1978, recalls his predecessor as an architect of the Carroll School as it exists today.
"He was the first real professional school dean who was a professional himself and not an academic," he said. "His greatest legacy is that he pushed very hard to have the school's graduate programs accredited. That really gave the school a national presence that it never had before. Because of the various accreditation requirements having to do with the number of faculty and the kinds of curriculum, it really changed the school quite dramatically. It set the stage for everything else that followed."
Dr. Kelley was a popular as well as effective administrator, Neuhauser said.
"Al was a warm person who liked a good laugh. He was a good, big-hearted man. That's how I remember him."
"Al had worked at NASA before he came to Boston College and he often told us that he could have been one of the original astronauts," Neuhauser laughed, "but he was a little too tall to fit into the capsule."
He left Boston College to become senior vice president of Arthur D. Little, Inc., a consulting firm in Cambridge, Mass. He also was an economic advisor to both Masssachusetts Gov. Francis Sargent and President Richard M. Nixon, and served as Undersecretary of Defense for International Programs in the administration of President George H. W. Bush.
Dr. Kelley was appointed a fellow in Harvard's Kennedy School of Government from 1994 until 1997 and in recent years was a senior research affiliate at MIT's Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He was a director of numerous corporations.
Until recent years, he was a technology management and investment consultant in the Boston and Washington, DC, areas.
Dr. Kelley was married to the late Virginia (Riley) Kelley. He is survived by sons Mark, Shaun and David, and five grandchildren. He was the brother of the late Barbara Mower, Joanne McCarthy and Gen. Paul X. Kelley, USMC (ret.) former commandant of the US Marine Corps.
In lieu of flowers, donation may be made to the Albert J. and Virginia M. Kelley Fund in care of the Boston College Development Office in More Hall.