Wallis served as dean of The University of Chicago Graduate School of Business from 1956 to 1962. During his time as dean he established the "Chicago Approach to Business Education," which involved the application of statistical methodology to business.[5]
He became president of the University of Rochester in 1962, a position he held until 1970, when he became the University of Rochester's chancellor and chief executive. In 1975, he relinquished the job of chief executive, but remained chancellor of the university until his retirement in 1982.[6]
In December 1992, the University of Rochester named a joint program of its Departments of Economics and Political Science in honor of Wallis: the W. Allen Wallis Institute of Political Economy at the University of Rochester.[7] He died in 1998 in Rochester, New York.
Presidential advisor
In addition to his role as an academic and academic administrator, Wallis served as an advisor to U.S. presidentsDwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan. Under Eisenhower, he collaborated with Vice President Nixon on the report of the Cabinet Committee on Price Stability for Economic Growth (1959–61). Under Nixon and Ford, he served on the President's Commission on Federal Statistics and on the Advisory Council on Social Security. Nixon also appointed Wallis as chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a post he held 1975–78. Under Reagan, he served as Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs (1982–85), and then, after Congress changed the job description and title, as Under Secretary of State for Economic, Business, and Agricultural Affairs (1985–89).
Wallis, W. Allen; Churchill Eisenhart; Millard W Hastay (1947), Selected Techniques of Statistical Analysis for Scientific and Industrial Research and Production and Management Engineering, New York: McGraw-Hill, OCLC490341075