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public schools. It is the only private university in the country with
two public magnet schools on campus—the University of Hartford
Magnet School and the University High School of Science
and Engineering.
President Harrison’s community involvement is extensive. He
serves on the boards of directors of the Connecticut Conference
of Independent Colleges and the Hartford Consortium of Higher
Education. He is currently the president of the board of the Hartford
Stage Company. He serves as trustee or director of a number
of other Hartford-area organizations, including the Greater
Hartford Arts Council, Saint Francis Hospital and Medical Center,
the Connecticut Science Center, and Suffield Academy. He is also
a director of WorldBusiness Capital, an international finance firm
based in Hartford.
Reflecting his longtime interest in intercollegiate athletics, President
Harrison chairs the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s
Committee on Academic Performance, the group charged with
implementing academic reforms among the nation’s leading intercollegiate
athletic programs, and serves on a number of other
NCAA committees. He is the immediate past chair of the NCAA
Executive Committee. He also serves on the Presidential Advisory
Committee of the Association of Governing Boards.
All this is a long way from President Harrison’s beginnings as
a scholar of American literature and culture. A native of Pittsburgh,
he graduated from Trinity College in Hartford in 1968,
then earned a master’s degree from the University of Michigan in
1969. After an interim of three years to serve as a captain in the
United States Air Force, President Harrison earned a doctorate
from the University of California–Davis. His doctoral dissertation,
“Out of Play: Baseball Fiction from Pulp to Art,” was one
of the earliest scholarly treatments of baseball and its place in
American life.
In 1982 President Harrison left full-time teaching to take an administrative
position at Colorado College. He joined Gehrung
Associates University Relations Counselors in 1985, becoming
president of the firm shortly thereafter. In 1989 President Harrison
moved to the University of Michigan, where he became vice
president of university relations and secretary of the university.
President Harrison and his wife, Dianne, a scholar of 19th-century
Victorian literature and mystery literature, make their home
in Russell House, the president’s residence at the University of
Hartford.
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