Alfred P. Sloan -- former head of General Motors and an avid philanthropist -- is heralded as one of the greatest business leaders of the 20th century. He is known for revolutionizing the auto industry, but his foresight stretched beyond cars. It was his vision of professionally managed hospitals that led to the creation of Cornell's Sloan Program. This year, the program is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a weekend of events on May 1-3.

In fact, Sloan was thinking about his own demise when he first suggested the idea of creating a school for hospital administrators at Cornell. It was the early 1950s, and then-Cornell President Deane Malott had visited Sloan to inquire about donations to Cornell's College of Engineering.

Sloan told Malott he hadn't considered donating to Cornell engineering, according to the Malott's written recollections in the Cornell archives. "Then turning to me, he said, 'But I'll tell you something. I expect to die in a hospital someday, and they are very poorly administered,'" Malott wrote.

"You at Cornell have a Hotel School, and a hospital is really a specialized kind of hotel," Sloan told Malott. "I've been thinking that hospital administrators should be better trained."

Sloan agreed to endow a program to train hospital administrators, and the nation's first two-year graduate program in hospital administration was born. In 1956 and 1957, the Sloan Foundation gave nearly $1.5 million to Cornell's new Institute of Hospital Administration located in Cornell's business school. Today, his donation would be worth more than $10 million.

"It is interesting that Mr. Sloan had the vision to create this groundbreaking program, and also that he saw the connection between health management and hotels," said R. Brooke Hollis, executive director of the Sloan Program, noting that Sloan students still routinely take courses in the Johnson and Hotel Schools.

The basic philosophy of the program is that future health leaders were best prepared by rigorous training in the core skills of management, a solid understanding of the health care system and hands-on learning in a real-world setting.

The first Sloan class entered Cornell in 1957 and graduated in 1959. Students had the option to receive a master's of business, professional studies or public administration degree, and also received a certificate of health administration. Then as now, students also received substantial exposure to industry via summer internships, field trips and formal and informal programs that foster interaction with practitioners.

In 1984, the Sloan Program moved to the College of Human Ecology from the Johnson School and became part of the Department of Policy Analysis and Management, which soon offered a master's degree in health administration. In 2006, the program also began offering a dual MHA/MBA with the Johnson School.

Today Sloan remains a highly selective program that draws students from a variety of schools across the county and internationally. Its small classes foster individualized education and provide students with access to faculty, alumni mentoring and the resources of Cornell's expertise in hospitality, business, medicine, facilities design and management, law and labor relations.

"We are still dedicated to Sloan's original mission -- producing new generations of leaders that can apply management expertise to advance the health and well-being of people and communities," said Will White, professor of policy analysis and management and director of the Sloan Program.

Sheri Hall is assistant director of communication in the College of Human Ecology.