Blazing Trails in the Community College Sector: Harper College Presidents' Leadership Strategies

Introduction

Before our college had a name, everyone in the northwest suburbs of Chicago seemed to have an idea about what it should be. In 1965, the debate spread to the pages of a local newspaper.

District residents wondered if the college should be named for a politician (Adlai E. Stevenson, who was raised in Illinois) or a war hero (Marquis de Lafayette, who most certainly was not). We could have carried the moniker of a local body of water (Salt Creek), a local newspaper founder (Hosea C. Paddock), or a portmanteau of district townships (Elkspaw, a name with a built-in mascot, perhaps).

Unmoved by these suggestions, the college’s first leaders considered something bolder. They thought of a name synonymous with excellence in education, with ties to the Chicago area and carrying an inextricable influence on the two-year college movement. On April 14, 1966, what was then Community College District 301 officially became William Rainey Harper College.

As detailed in the introduction of this book, William Rainey Harper was a brilliant trailblazer in post-secondary education. He shares responsibility for the founding of the University of Chicago and Bradley University (and served as the first president of each Illinois institution). He created the United States’ first collegiate departments of sociology and Egyptology and had a daring vision for how to provide a better education for Americans in their communities. His forward-thinking approach led to the founding of the first junior college in the country, Joliet Junior College, fewer than 50 miles south of where Harper College stands, and paved the way for the American community college movement that would bring about his namesake college more than a half-century later in Palatine, Illinois.

Harper’s name helped establish our college’s credibility in its nascent days and we have continued to celebrate our connection to this pioneer in education. Soil samples from the grounds of other prestigious institutions affiliated with William Rainey Harper—the University of Chicago, Yale University, and Muskingum College—were mixed with the college’s native soil at the 1967 groundbreaking of the Harper College campus. William Rainey Harper’s grandchildren attended a 1970 ceremony marking the completion of the first phase of campus construction and his granddaughter, Jane Harper Overton, donated a collection of her grandfather’s personal artifacts to the college archive. In 1986, a bust of Harper was commissioned and installed on our campus. It is placed in the middle of the college’s quadrangle—a common campus meeting spot and location for student activities.

Figure 1.

A bust of William Rainey Harper sits in Harper College’s quadrangle

(Hubatch, 2021)

His bust and our name are ever-present reminders of William Rainey Harper’s legacy of innovation in higher education. Our namesake serves not only as a point of pride but also as an enduring challenge to the academic and administrative leaders who have guided Harper College over the decades. We are inspired by William Rainey Harper’s example to seek excellence in educating our students and exist as a vanguard of innovation to serve our constituents and supply the regional workforce. Commensurate with William Rainey Harper’s concept of educating Americans in their communities, we embrace our role as our community’s college. In addition, just as he became a renowned force for education, our college is a national leader for student success, striving to inspire our fellow two-year institutions at the forefront of education.

Now in our sixth decade of leadership, Harper College is one of the most forward-thinking and successful community colleges in the country. In this chapter, I will discuss Harper’s accomplishments during my presidency before delving into the innovations forged by the five presidents whose administrations preceded mine. Then, I will detail Harper’s vision for the future, which is naturally informed and inspired by our legacy of leadership. Our college’s trailblazing nature started with our name. That was only the beginning.