Mays Business School is the business school at Texas A&M University. The school educates more than 6,400 undergraduate, master’s and doctoral students in accounting, finance, management, management information systems, marketing and supply chain management. Mays Business School was one of the first five schools in the United States to offer a trading center, the Reliant Energy Securities & Commodities Trading Center, which provides students with hands-on training to the tools used by commodities and currency traders. Students also use the center to manage the Tanner Fund, a $250,000 portfolio created using donated funds. Additionally, the School houses the nation's largest publicly funded real estate research organization, the Real Estate Center, and the Center for Retailing Studies, which was the first retailing center partnered with a business school. History Business education was first offered at Texas Agricultural and Mechanical College in conjunction with mechanical and agricultural programs. From 1876 through 1920 students at Texas A&M could select from a small number of business courses including single and double-entry bookkeeping and creamery management. In the 1920s the Department of Economics and the Agricultural Administration programs began offering further business courses, and by the end of the decade the college had established departments for accounting and statistics, farm and ranch management, marketing, and finance. Shortly after World War II, Thomas W. Leland became the first department head of the newly created Department of Business and Accounting, under the umbrella of the School of Arts and Sciences. After Leland's retirement in 1961, the School of Business Administration formed. By 1965 the new head of the department, John E. Pearson, had spearheaded the formation of several departments within the School of Business, including accounting, business analysis and research, finance, marketing, and management. The Master of Business Administration (MBA) program debuted in 1966, and two years later in 1968, the college was officially formed when Texas A&M received University status, and the School of Business became the College of Business Administration. The college was accredited by the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business in 1972, and began awarding Ph.D.s the same year. Over the next several decades the college continued to grow, establishing various centers, including the Center for International Business Studies and the Center for Human Resources Management, and implementing new bachelor's degrees. The College of Business moved into the newly built Wehner Building on the western edge of Texas A&M University's campus in