Kellogg School of Management students are serious about business. But they’re serious about fun, too.
Every year, MBA students come together to write, direct and perform in Special K!, a musical comedy show featuring singing, dancing and drama sketches about life at Kellogg. The show is one of Kellogg’s longest-standing traditions. And for some students, it is a reason they chose Kellogg over other business schools, says Bill Jerome ’80 MBA.
“Special K! is a reflection of the unique culture that is Kellogg,” says Jerome, who wrote and performed in the first Special K! show in 1980. He credits Edmund Wilson ’84 MBA, former associate dean of student affairs at Kellogg, for the idea.
“After Frank McGann ’80 MBA and I wrote a musical number for the 1979 Waa-Mu Show, Ed Wilson [who died in 2024] asked us if Kellogg could launch a similar show,” Jerome says. “We sent out a survey to gauge interest, and over 100 colleagues offered to be part of this. Betsy Stolte Youngdahl ’81 MBA stepped in as executive producer, and she was the reason that everything came together that first year.”
The “P&G Quartet” performs at the first Special K! show in 1980. Credit: From Kellogg’s Summer 1980 issue of Printout, courtesy of Bill Jerome ’80 MBA
“One thing that was really important to us was to try to find roles for everyone who wanted to participate — even if they didn’t want to be on stage,” says Youngdahl. “So we worked hard to find jobs for folks. (Plus we needed the help!)”
Special K! presents five shows per year: four during Kellogg’s alumni reunion weekend in the spring and one in the fall for the incoming class of MBA students.
“It’s so wonderful that the show has kept going,” Youngdahl says.
Jerome agrees. Special K!, he says, “is camaraderie and friendship. It is unleashing the creative, uninhibited and encouraging aspects of the Kellogg community. It is finding humor in our situations and … never taking life too seriously.”
The 46th revue, BreaKthrough, ran May 1–3.
Cate Bikales ’26 is an editorial intern for Northwestern Magazine.
Reader Responses
I worked as crew and a skit writer for Special K! in the spring of 1988 and it was an absolute blast. Tons of fun. Dean Ed Wilson participated in one of the skits, and he was hilarious!
What struck me most was the sheer artistic talent that so many of my classmates had (singing, dancing, musicianship, comedy), things that were not apparent in the classrooms.
I was very proud to learn that in 2001, Special K! carried on the tradition immediately after 9/11, when there was not a lot of joy in the world. It was an important way to pass the unique torch of the Kellogg culture into the future.
— Steven Carnes '84, '89 MBA, Grand Rapids, Mich.
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