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Givens’
Stake in Higher Ed
By Kevin Kipp
Show him an envelope and Henry Givens Jr. will stretch it. Or perhaps
the president of Harris-Stowe State College will find his name in
it.
He began his career in 1957 as a fifth- and sixth-grade teacher
in Webster Groves. Now he leads a college that offered one degree
— elementary education — when he took the reins. Today Harris-Stowe
offers 12 degrees. Givens also provides board leadership to a score
of organizations as diverse as the Antioch Baptist Church and the
St. Louis Symphony.
Along the journey, Givens has collected more than 100 awards, including
honorary doctorates of Humane Letters from Lincoln University and
Saint Louis University. The Sumner High grad’s earned-by-study degrees
are a Ph.D. in education from SLU, a master’s from University of
Illinois, and a bachelor’s from Lincoln.
Givens credits his parents for emphasizing the importance of education.
“My father had three jobs and my mother was a homemaker. He always
said that education was essential ... the more the better. She made
sure my two brothers, my sister and I were in school and did our
homework.” Henry and Catherine Givens would be proud.
The younger Henry Givens wrote his doctoral dissertation about the
first school where he was principal: Douglas Elementary School.
It wasn’t just any school. “It was the first prototype of a magnet
school in the nation. We did not know what to call it in 1967, but
that’s what it was. We called it a demonstration school.”
What was demonstrated was the effectiveness of now fairly standard
classroom practices. Givens enumerated: “Multi-age grouping of students,
open classrooms, team teaching and individualized instruction so
students could move as fast as they could, but no student was left
behind.”
The curriculum featured foreign language in the third grade, biology
labs in the fifth.
“It was previously an all-black school in a black neighborhood,”
Givens explains, “and we were bussing white students in.”
The school needed a faculty, too. “We were concerned if other teachers
would come, until we received 85 applications for 20 positions.
That may have been one of the finest faculty ever.”
Fine enough to catch the eye of Dr. Arthur Mallory, then-Governor
Kit Bond’s commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education.
In 1973, Mallory asked Givens to become the first African-American
assistant commissioner of education in the state of Missouri. Givens
accepted.
In 1979, the St. Louis Board of Education ceded Harris-Stowe Teachers
College to the state. Somebody had to run the place. Givens’s curriculum
vitae was one out of 167; he got the nod.
“The enabling legislation to join the state system stated Harris-Stowe
would remain a teacher training institution,” Givens says. “That
held up our growth, so I said [puffing up] ‘I’m gonna get this changed
right away’ … [exhaling] but it didn’t change until 1993.”
Meanwhile, then-Governor John Ashcroft called on Givens to lead
an effort to dig Lincoln University out of a $3 million deficit.
“When the governor called me, I said, ‘Governor, what do I do about
Harris-Stowe?’ Without blinking an eye, he said, ‘Run them both.’
My board agreed to let me try.”
In a repeat of Douglas-esque team building, Givens went to the Council
of Public Higher Education Presidents. “They each loaned me a vice
president for the year. Instead of high-priced consultants, we had
highly visible volunteers: top administrators from throughout the
state.”
Henry
C. Givens Jr., president, Harris-Stowe State College |
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Givens spent three days a week at each institution that year. “Some
days I didn’t know where I was,” he chuckles. “But it was my opportunity
to pay the school back. I wouldn’t be in this position without Lincoln
University.”
(Another debt: Givens met his wife, Belma Evans Givens, there. “She
was a freshman when I was a senior. We got married at the end of
her freshman year.” They have two children and three grandchildren.)
Attorney Wayman Smith chairs Harris-Stowe’s board of regents. He
has known Givens “going back 40 years to when he was clerking in
the grocery store around the corner from where I lived.”
“Dr. Givens has done some amazing things,” Smith says. “Under his
leadership we’ve gone from a single discipline to a dozen.”
Givens, however, is more proud that 90 percent of his students are
the first generation in their families to pursue higher education.
Besides degrees and opportunity, Givens is expanding the campus.
“We’ve gone from having one building for more than a hundred years
to having three by October,” Smith says.
It’s growth made possible by the college’s purchase of 20 acres,
including the former Laclede Town, from the City of St. Louis for
$20.
The Southwestern Bell Library and Technology Resource Center was
completed in October 1998. The Physical Education and Performing/Visual
Arts Center is slated for October 2002. Ground is ready for the
Early Childhood/Parenting Education Building, Givens explains, but
state budget cuts to higher education are putting it and the rest
of the expansion on hold.
Givens had expected to complete these projects in 2004, but now
sees 2007 as more realistic.
Smith is confident Givens will get it done. “He was called in at
a time when everyone thought he would preside over the closing of
Harris-Stowe. If you look at the history of his leadership, everything
indicates that he will succeed.”
Kevin Kipp runs Bubble Communications, a creative services and
community relations firm in St. Charles.
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