The Trustees of Grinnell College announced on Wednesday, Oct. 2 that the contract of Anne Harris, the College’s president, has been extended for another five years. Harris, who was named president in July 2020 amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, will continue in her current role through June 30, 2030.
Harris’s current term extends to June 30, 2025. She said the Trustees “did their work in good time” in regards to the punctuality of her contract renewal.
“We meet in our care of Grinnell College,” Harris said, speaking of her relationship with the Trustees. “They hold the institution in trust, not just for their own time, but for generations after. And so we’re here doing the day to day, you know, the operations, and the Trustees look to the future.”
Like the Trustees, Harris is also looking to the future for her next term. “I really do think that with the dedication of Renfrow Hall, you are seeing not just a glimpse,” she said. “You are seeing the vision that I have for Grinnell in its making a difference in its community engagement, in its addressing its own history, in putting its efforts of knowledge into understanding itself.”
Renfrow Hall, which was dedicated on Sept. 28, is expected to fully open for students in spring 2025. Harris said the partnerships formed throughout the process were integral to its success, and specifically thanked Tamara Beauboeuf-Lafontant, professor and Louise R. Noun chair of gender, women’s and sexuality studies, for her leadership.
Harris also said she sees the dedication of Renfrow Hall as a pivotal moment between her two terms. “If you want to look at the pandemic as the beginning of my presidency, and then the dedication of Renfrow Hall as kind of — what does it do? It opens the door to this second term,” Harris said.
“Knowledge into Action,” the College’s strategic plan, approved last November, is designed to guide the institution through the end of Harris’s next term in 2030. Harris said that academic and holistic wellbeing form two key components of the plan.
“Working with alumni, working with students, the idea of that kind of work deepening our connection to each other and to the ideal — not utopia — but the ideal that Grinnell is that we may never meet,” Harris said, referring to her hopes for the plan’s fulfillment. “The same way that we’re [the United States] always working to meet the ideal of democracy, which we have not done right for a multi-racial, multicultural democracy. We are a nation that is hard at work and needs to be hard at work.”
The construction of Renfrow Hall and the strategic planning process are only some of the projects Harris has overseen during her tenure. The one she is personally most proud of, however, is Grinnell’s no-loan policy, which eliminated student loans from students’ financial aid packages.
“Being a no-loan institution, that is transformative across generations, because we know that student debt can be carried for a very, very long time,” Harris said. “No longer packaging loans and financial aid feels like a very big moment.”
“How honored I am to think with its [Grinnell’s] faculty and staff and students and alumni,” Harris said.“The President sits at a wonderful place in the kaleidoscope of Grinnell. I don’t know that it’s the center, but it’s a really nice spot where I get to be connected to the community.”
