A Legacy of Innovation and Storytelling in Hospitality Education
Robert M. Chase, Engr ’59, MBA ’61, known affectionately as Bob, Prof., Dad, Dandy, and Bob the Letterman, was memorable for his storytelling, but his contributions to the Cornell School of Hotel Administration extend far beyond the fond memories of his engaging lecture style. His legacy is one of innovation, dedication, and an unyielding commitment to advancing hospitality education.
In 1964, Chase attended a workshop in Endicott, New York, offered by International Business Machines (IBM). While playing a “management game,” he had an epiphany, seeing the potential of “discovery learning” for teaching hotel business concepts through self-guided discovery.
More than a decade before Microsoft was founded, Robert Chase drafted a plan to incorporate computers into hospitality education. Dean Bob Beck recalled, “Computers were coming along, but they were quite a way away. Bob Chase kept coming to me and telling me, ‘This is the future, this is the future,’ and I said, ‘Forget it.’ He said, ‘I’d like to take some of my time to look into this,’ so we talked about it and set it up.”
Chase’s persistence paid off. Despite initial skepticism, he established one of the first computer- based programs at Cornell, placing the Hotel School ahead of all other departments except engineering in terms of computer literacy. Beck praised Chase as “a genius”, recognizing his foresight and dedication to preparing students for a technologically advanced future.
Chase’s name is now synonymous with the Cornell Hotel School, thanks in large part to his invention of CHASE (Cornell Hotel School Simulation Exercise) and its restaurant companion, CRASE (Cornell Restaurant Administration Simulation Exercise). These groundbreaking computer software exercises revolutionized hospitality education by providing students and industry professionals with hands-on, practical experience in managing simulated hotel and restaurant operations.
In the late 1960’s while he was establishing the Hotel School’s computer department and teaching a 3-credit introduction to machine language, he was building CHASE where teams of students managed imaginary hotels using computer simulations. Although initially using punch cards for data entry, Chase later transitioned to terminals connected to a mainframe, ensuring the focus remained on hotel management, strategy, and financial reporting rather than on the mechanics of data entry.
The CHASE game led to CRASE and CHESS (Cornell Educational Strategic Simulation). CHESS was the first program to run in real-time. As technology evolved, Chase shepherded the programs through conversions to run on five different computer platforms. The games were used by corporations including Intercontinental Hotels, Marriott Corporation, Howard Johnson’s, KFC, among others, and hospitality schools all over the world. Ironically, the games were not used as widely by other schools in the United States, which preferred not to display the Cornell name. In recent years, the games have been dropped from the Cornell Hotel School curriculum, too, as basic classes in hotel and restaurant management are streamlined to make room for instructions in finance and real estate. But today, every freshman must take an introduction to business computing that had its origins in Robert Chase’s passion for information technology.
As his son, I recognize that Professor Chase placed a heavy emphasis on deductive learning. His stories were an attempt to create mutual shared experiences, fostering this type of learning. Whether offering an alternative perspective on accounting or narrating a 12-meter boat race to Bermuda, his tales were engaging and thought-provoking. He often said, “The world rewards the problem finders, not the problem solvers,” embodying his belief that clearly defining a problem was key. His approach inspired us to focus more on identifying problems than on finding solutions, helping us grow from students into independent, critical thinkers, and business leaders.
Evidence of his success can be seen in the myriads of people who he has influenced and helped grow from young, anxious freshmen to confident professionals. The list of names is extensive, spanning more than forty years and 1,000’s of graduates. Some were directly involved with CHASE helping to build and teach including Tom Diehl ’68 (MBA ’70), Joe Kohler ’71, Chuck Henry ’74, Bob Kastner ’78, Conrad Wangeman ’79, Cindy Estis Green ’79 (Hotel School Hall of Fame ’23), Bill Foster ’81, Ginny Mariani-Kitt ’82, Steve Shapiro ’84, Danny Webster ’84, and Keith Robbins ’86, to name a few. These and others were among Robert Chase’s teaching assistants who traveled the world with him spreading the Cornell name with a mutual commitment to adventure, good times and education through discovery learning.
Tribute to Professor Robert M Chase from Robert E Kastner ’78
I met Professor Chase my freshman year at Cornell in 1974. He was my teacher for the required computer course in FORTRAN. He hired me as his teaching assistant a couple of years later to assist him in updating the CRASE & CHASE management simulation games. I never realized that experience would have an impact on my life and career forever as an educator.
Professor Chase is a gifted and talented teacher, and a visionary who used technology behind the scenes to enhance the educational experience. Through his stories, anecdotes and jokes he made the various business-related topics understandable to both young students and industry professionals. He is well known and respected by thousands of students whom he taught over his long teaching career both at Cornell and throughout the world.
Professor Chase became a huge part of my life throughout the almost 10 years I was in Ithaca. After teaching at Cornell, I continued to work with Professor Chase in a professional capacity. I travelled with him extensively throughout the world conducting executive education as he delivered management training programs using the CRASE & CHASE management games for companies including Hilton International, Inter-Continental Hotels, Holiday Inns, Howard Johnson Franchise Systems, General Mills Restaurant Group, Ponderosa, Inc., American Telephone & Telegraph, American Express, Sheraton Hotels & Resorts, Hyatt Hotels, Radisson Hotels & Resorts, Bureau of Indian Affairs and the United States Army. Professor Chase was well received as a teacher not only in the hospitality industry, but also in other related industries. His uncanny ability to understand how businesses operate and succeed and communicate that understanding to his audience attests not only to his brilliance, but also his dedication to understanding the hospitality industry.
Some say that working with Professor Chase was one of the highlights of their Cornell experience. For me, Professor Chase was not only my teacher, but also my mentor, companion, colleague, and friend. My Cornell colleagues say that I was the lucky one being able to work with Professor Chase not only while at Cornell but throughout my entire life. I have to agree. Thank you, Professor Chase, for your relentless dedication and contributions to the hospitality industry.
Prof Chase – Teacher, Mentor and Friend. Written by Conrad Wangeman ’79
While Professor Chase taught finance in the Hotel School, his mission was not only to teach students about the time value of money but more importantly to help students think. He used humor and misdirection in his effective arsenal of teaching tools. In class with eager and impressionable students, he would stack up the data on one side, then inquire what the students thought. Next, he would stack the answers on the other side and again ask for everyone’s opinion. He would whipsaw the students for some time so they would start to question and think for themselves.
Prof Chase’s sheer genius can be seen in his management games, the forerunner by a significant margin of today’s computer simulations. These computer driven management games “Chase and Crase” he built in the days of punch cards. These games were designed to challenge, to educate, to entertain, to set up competition between groups to get people engaged in sharing thoughts and ideas. Chase took these management games on the road at many of the preeminent hotel/ hospitality ventures including Hilton International, Holiday Inn, and US Government Clubs.
Early on, Chase was a prodigious sailor with his friend and mentor Gerry Ford who was his intellectual father. Nyala was Gerry’s 12-meter boat and Chase’s laboratory of life where he learned how to sail, to think through challenges, develop relationships and to laugh at oneself which he passed onto his students. He taught so much more than finance in and outside of the classroom.
While a passionate teacher Chase was also a lifelong supporter, promoter, contributor and ambassador of Cornell University. He was a continual contributor to the Tower Club, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he was one of the club’s longest contributors.
He was married to his intellectual peer Faith Chase, who outside her family loved ecology and nature passionately, which included all wildlife animals. They lived for most of their life on the backside of Buttermilk Falls raising their two children, Denton and Kimberly.
Tribute written by Denton Chase
Professor Chase – the Pioneer (Sung to the tune of Sesame Street)
Chase is the man,
Being professor was the plan,
Growing student’s minds is how it ran,
You can’t help but be a fan.
Can you tell me how to find this Pioneer from Statler Street?
His teaching style is the key,
For students learning easily,
Accounting and Finance perfectly,
His grads are all that they can be.
Can you tell me how to find this Pioneer from Statler Street?
CHASE is the name,
The inventor of the game,
The simulation gave him fame,
Discovery learning – he did proclaim.
Can you tell me how to find this Pioneer from Statler Street, this Pioneer from Statler Street?
(Sung to Professor Chase at the dinner after the retirement cocktail party by: Conrad Wangeman ’79, Hakan Sokmensuer ’80, Charlie Tall ENG ’78, Charlie Henry ’74, and Robert Kastner ’76.)
