Open Door: The one Hundred Year History of Grand Rapids Junior College/Community College

by Walt Lockwood and Mike Klawitter

Author Walter Lockwood and GRCC archivist Mike Klawitter will present highlights of the newly published book Open Door, a 100 year history of Grand Rapids Junior/ Community College. They will feature a sampling of the characters, the events, and the images that have made up the college’s surprisingly rich history.

The first junior college in Michigan opened its doors in 1914, the inspiration of G.R. Central High Principal Jesse B. Davis. Grand Rapids Junior College would spend its first 11 years occupying the third floor of Central, with Davis serving as high school principal and first president of the college. With the blessing of the University of Michigan, and under the jurisdiction of the Grand Rapids Public Schools, GRJC enrolled 49 students who had to meet U of M admissions standards and navigate classes duplicating the first two years of the University’s Arts and Sciences program. From the beginning, Davis expected excellence from both faculty and students. Neither group disappointed him.

From just after World War I to the mid 1950’s, President Arthur Andrews led the college with a passionate commitment to Davis’s tradition of excellence. Like Davis, Andrews was a progressive educator deeply involved in the junior college movement. He secured (in 1925) the college’s first building. Through the Depression and World War II, Andrews’ strong leadership would preserve the college’s existence when circumstances conspired to end it.

The four chief executives who followed Andrews were deans instead of presidents. Andrews’ unilateral leadership style (in 35 years, he operated with three or

fewer administrative staff) made it necessary for Deans Terrill, Visser, and Fink to create an administrative organizational structure. They also moved the college to an open door admissions policy and undertook to change its nature from primarily a transfer institution to one more heavily invested in occupational training. Fink began a strong push for separating the college from GRPS.

Dean Francis McCarthy led GRJC through a period (1965-’75) of dramatic increases in enrollment, faculty hiring, and expansion of facilities. In 1974, the crushing failure of a college redistricting election indicated the voting public had failed to understand the need for separation. Superintendent Philip Runkel chose a close associate, Richard Calkins, to be the seventh chief executive of the college. With the restored title of president, Calkins would guide the college for the next 23 years, arguably the most visionary and productive of GRJC leaders, orchestrating a golden age of college expansion of programs, technology, and facilities. In 1991, after a successful redistricting election, Calkins helped celebrate the birth of Grand Rapids Community College, a newly independent institution.

Calkins and Juan Olivarez, the president who followed him, were instrumental in promoting diversity and opening the doors of the college wider than ever before. They oversaw the rapid growth of occupational programs in response to community needs. Present President Steven Ender, who has seen the 1914 enrollment of 49 rise above the 18,000 mark, has guided the purchase and renovation of the downtown Davenport University campus, the renovation of aging central campus buildings, and the dramatic shift to performance-based contracts for faculty and staff.

Over 100 years, the college has helped anchor the central city and inspire its renaissance. Remarkable leaders have guided GRJC/GRCC through every threat to its well being, through explosive growth and dizzying change, and have never lost sight of Jesse Davis’s commitment to excellence in all things.

“Open Door: The one Hundred Year History of Grand Rapids Junior College/Community College”, co-sponsored by Grand Rapids Community College, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum and Grand Rapids Historical Society, Thursday, March 12, 2015, 7:00 p.m. at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum by Walt Lockwood and Mike Klawitter.