Second dean: Charles Rovetta launched FSU Business into the modern era

Charles Rovetta served as FSU’s second business dean, succeeding J. Frank Dame in 1953 and continuing until 1973, one year before the School of Business became the College of Business. After stepping down as dean, Rovetta became an accounting professor – still lauded, a half century later, for his personal attention to students.
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No name is more synonymous with the Florida State University College of Business than Charles A. Rovetta.

For more than 40 years, FSU business students and employees have been studying and working in the Rovetta Business Building. The college's most revered and accomplished former faculty members get inducted into the Charles A. Rovetta Faculty Hall of Fame. And when university books, documents and biographies refer to the business school's first leap into modernity, they jump at the chance to mention Charles Rovetta.

Rovetta (1907-2004) served as FSU’s second business dean, succeeding J. Frank Dame in 1953 and continuing until 1973, one year before the School of Business became the College of Business. After stepping down as dean, Rovetta became an accounting professor – still lauded, a half century later, for his personal attention to students -- and retired in 1979.

His 20 years of leadership coincided with four U.S. presidential administrations and the world's first communications satellite, residential microwave oven and wireless TV remote control.

Rovetta likewise set up the school for the 21st century. E. Ray Solomon, who succeeded Rovetta and served 17 years as dean, said Rovetta left “a legacy of dedication to the business school and high-quality education.” And Michael Hartline, the college’s current dean, suggests that Rovetta is “the father of the College of Business.”

Rovetta more than doubled the faculty size and recruited new hires from top U.S. universities. He compelled his faculty to provide “a variable, resilient education for those who will be leaders in this society,” according to the program for the School of Business’ 1970 Annual President’s Lecture Series. The program continued, according to “A Golden Moment: Our Fiftieth Anniversary,” a commemorative 2021 publication of the College of Business: “The task is to direct the goals of the school toward providing an understanding of the economic, social, political and cross-cultural forces as they change during the latter part of this century and the first part of the next.”

Rovetta expanded accounting and finance offerings and launched new graduate programs, including the Master of Business Administration (MBA) and a Doctorate in Business Administration (DBA). And, speaking of progress, he oversaw the school’s installation in 1958 of FSU's first computer, an IBM 650.

The computer stood about the size of a refrigerator. But there was no cooling off sizzling enrollment, which under Rovetta almost doubled from 1960 to 1970. The stream of students followed accreditation from the American Association of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) of FSU’s undergraduate business programs in 1962 and its master’s programs in 1964.

The organization later became the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, or AACSB International, which institutions recognize as the gold-standard benchmark of educational quality for business schools worldwide. According to AACSB, only 6 percent of business schools achieve this honor.

This year marks 63 continuous years of AACSB accreditation for the College of Business, which also boasts multiple Top 5 and Top 10 programs in national rankings of public schools. For those accomplishments and more, the college honors the legacy of Rovetta and other pioneers throughout 2025 as it celebrates its 75th year as a separate entity focusing on business education.

“We’ll forever salute Charles Rovetta as a genuine titan in the formation of our college and as the foundation for the international recognition we’ve built,” said Hartline, the current dean.

When he arrived at Florida State in 1953 from the University of Chicago, where he served as assistant business dean, Rovetta encountered a School of Business that had only 27 faculty members serving what had become the university's third-largest academic unit. Many of them worked in a one-story building on West Jefferson Street.

Two years later, Rovetta helped the university secure $1 million from the Florida Legislature for a dedicated 70,000-square-foot building, which opened in 1958. In 1984, the university renovated that building, completed construction of a second building and named both in honor of Rovetta, who in 2017 became part of the first class inducted into the Faculty Hall of Fame that now bears his name.

Bill Peterson Jr. (BS Accounting ’78) fondly recalls the mid-1970s, long before the era of cyber communication, when he received a letter from Rovetta congratulating him for his performance in Rovetta’s accounting class. “He was a caring and excellent instructor who wanted to help his students get a strong foundation in accounting,” Peterson said. “It worked for me.” Peterson, son of the late former FSU and NFL football coach Bill Peterson Sr., started his career as a Certified Public Accountant. Today he’s chairman of Otter’s Chicken, based in Marietta, Ga.

Other former students shared similar stories of personal support. “I owed him a lot for his individual guidance,” said Mike Pate (BS Business Administration '68), a student of Rovetta and a 2012 College of Business Alumni Hall of Fame inductee who served publisher of the Tallahassee Democrat from 1997 to 2005.

Long after Pate’s graduation and Rovetta’s retirement, Pate said, the two became friends. “He was a good man, a mentor and friend, who deserved the recognition of having the Rovetta Business Building named in his honor,” Pate said.

Some 41 years later, the College of Business – which now boasts nearly 8,000 students pursuing business degrees plus more than 1,000 FSU students taking at least one business course -- prepares to transition into Legacy Hall, a world-class, five-story showcase facility scheduled for completion in August.

College and university officials named it Legacy Hall to demonstrate the role that alumni, friends, faculty, staff and students – and leaders such as Rovetta – continue to play in the history of the College of Business.

“Charles Rovetta was a beloved visionary dean and faculty member who charted paths to success for countless students and our college,” Hartline said. “It’s only natural that his name remains so closely associated with the achievements of our students and faculty members and our preeminence. It likely always will be.”

-- Pete Reinwald