Darnell Windmon is one of two Faculty Fellows at Harper College in Palatine, Illinois. He is currently teaching in the Math Department.
This semester, though, you’ll find Tronshaw teaching English composition at Harper College—a community college located in Palatine, Illinois, one of Chicago’s northern suburbs. Harper is, in some ways, far from where Tronshaw grew up on the city’s predominantly African-American South Side.
But Chicago’s northern suburbs are changing demographically, and Tronshaw is helping Harper as it tries to keep up with the changes. Harper is also helping Tronshaw burnish her credentials as a college teacher. Tronshaw is one of two newly minted master’s degree graduates in Harper’s Faculty Fellows Program.
Faculty Fellows enrich the learning environment on campus while they gain experience that likely would have taken years to build elsewhere as adjuncts. They also are bolstering the diversity of Harper’s teaching faculty.
“In the last 10 years, the community that we serve looks very different from what it did 10 years ago,” says Michelé Robinson, Harper’s assistant provost and special assistant to the president for diversity and inclusion.
As in suburbs around other major cities, minority populations are growing. The Hispanic population in the municipalities surrounding Harper jumped 38 percent between 2000 and 2010. The Black population climbed almost 14 percent. At the same time, the White population declined almost 11 percent.
Robinson, who arrived at Harper 12 years ago to teach early childhood education, witnessed this trend. When she became assistant provost in January, she began to look at the numbers and seek ways to “get the college’s workforce to more closely resemble our community,” she says.
