Dr. George Pruitt ’68, M.S. ’70, LH.D. ’94, saw the inside of a university president’s office for the first time in the fall of 1967 when he occupied it with other members of the Black Student Association (BSA) to issue their demands to increase diversity at Illinois State University. However, this would not be his last time in a president’s office, as today he is one of longest-serving university presidents nationwide.
When Pruitt transferred to Illinois State after five semesters at the University of Illinois, he had no idea that this decision would change the course of his life and future career. When he arrived in January 1967, he was one of the less than 200 Black students on campus, a major transition from his life growing up on the South Side of Chicago. Pruitt soon found his home away from home as he became friends with other members of the Black community at Illinois State, and they came together to form the BSA with Pruitt serving as its first president.
At the time, the number of Black students on Illinois State’s campus was disproportionate to the number of Black individuals residing in the state of Illinois. Pruitt and his peers in BSA were ready for that to change, and they knew it wouldn’t happen unless they took action. This is how they found themselves occupying President Braden’s office with a list of demands to increase the number of Black students, employees, and speakers and entertainers brought to campus.
“This negotiation turned into a collaboration, and we found out that what we wanted and what President Braden wanted aligned, and out of that, the High Potential Students Program (HPS) was born,” Pruitt said.
With the help of Kenneth “Buzz” Shaw, Illinois State’s assistant to the president at the time, math professor Charles Morris and Paul Wisdom, associate dean of the faculty, Pruitt and BSA members developed a Black student recruitment initiative, HPS, which would send recruitment teams of current Black Illinois State students to their respective hometowns to recruit other Black prospective students to enroll at Illinois State for the fall semester. With the combined efforts of Pruitt and BSA peers, the number of Black students enrolled at Illinois State for the fall semester increased by 150 percent.
Throughout the rest of Pruitt’s time at Illinois State as a student, he continued to advocate for the representation of diverse students, and his work in bettering higher education wouldn’t stop there. Upon graduation, Pruitt found himself with a decision to make. He was offered two positions: one at Illinois State as the faculty assistant to the dean of the faculty and the associate director of the HPS program and one as an entry-level manager at Illinois Bell Telephone Company.
“I was trying to decide what path I wanted to take, but I knew I wanted to build on what I started at Illinois State,” Pruitt said.
Although Pruitt wanted to continue his work at Illinois State, he also didn’t want to close the door on the opportunity at Illinois Bell. So, he decided to accept the position there to give it a try, but after working there for a few months, Pruitt discovered the work he was doing didn’t ignite the same passion in him that the work at Illinois State did.
Pruitt shared more of this passion in his book From Protest to President: “At ISU, I felt I could contribute to changing the country, not just one institution or corporation. I could advocate for access to meaningful education, the ability to vote, the opportunity for people to choose the community they wanted to live in, or the right to purchase a home or swim on a public beach. People were literally dying for these causes.”
Soon enough, Pruitt returned to campus as both a full-time employee and a graduate student during a time that would be anything but easy for campus administrators as college campuses were riddled with tension with the rise of civil rights protests and the war in Vietnam, and Illinois State did not go unscathed. With protests at the flagpole regarding the murder of members of the Black Panthers and movements to rename the Student Union after Malcolm X, the beginning of Pruitt’s career in higher education was filled with challenges that would impact his life and career for years to come.
While Pruitt cherished his time at Illinois State and the impact he was able to make on the University, he was soon contacted by the same man who had given him the position at Illinois State, Buzz Shaw, for a new opportunity halfway across the country at Towson University. Pruitt would then take the next step in his higher education journey and become the dean of students at Towson.
“From my work at Illinois State and then at Towson, I became enamored with the transformational power of the academy and higher education. I thought colleges and universities were wonderful places that empowered people, created new knowledge, and developed the human capital that the future of society depended on,” said Pruitt in excerpt from From Protest to President.
Before he knew it, Pruitt began to climb the ladder in higher education, and at 26-years-old, he became the vice president of student affairs at Morgan State University, a historically Black college. However, after working there for only three years, Morgan’s president stepped down, and with that, Pruitt decided to look for other ventures as well, which he then found at Tennessee State University as a vice president. After a brief tenure as executive vice president and chief operating officer of the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL), he began his presidency at Thomas Edison State University on December 1, 1982.
“For me, work was a calling. I saw what ISU did for people, what it did for me, and the power and transformative nature of making education accessible for everyone. I wanted it to be accessible to more than just a small sliver of society,” he said.
Pruitt’s passion and desire to broaden the scope of education aligned perfectly with Thomas Edison’s mission to educate nontraditional students. Educating adult students was something Pruitt had experience with after teaching an evening class for adults when he worked at Towson University. Now, he could continue to impact and encourage adult education at the university’s highest level, and while that impact is incredibly important, Pruitt notes that his favorite part of higher education is still the interaction he gets to have with students.
“For my entire career in higher education, my favorite part has been getting to see students walk across the stage, shake their hand, and know that their lives are going to be different and better because of the institution,” Pruitt said. “I love watching students grow and develop, and that’s why I committed my life to higher education because it’s a very wonderful and rewarding thing.”
Not only has Pruitt committed his life to higher education through his presidency, but he has also done so on a federal level for universities across the nation with aiding in forming national education policies. With Pruitt’s wide array of experiences in higher education, he has helped advise five secretaries of education under three United States presidents, including working on the formation of the State Authorization Reciprocity Agreement, which implements national standards for interstate postsecondary distance education. With this work, Pruitt has impacted the lives of students across the nation.
After 35 years as president of Thomas Edison and one of the longest-serving university presidents in the nation, Pruitt made the decision to step down from the position in 2018, but he wanted the lessons he learned, the challenges he faced, and his overall experiences in higher education to live on for future generations. To do this, he wrote and published the book From Protest to President: A Social Justice Journey through the Emergence of Adult Education and the Birth of Distance Learning.
“The presidency is a very tough job, and they don’t talk about the costs that come with it. I wanted to write a book about calling, values, vision, service, and sacrifice. It’s about doing the right thing, even when it’s not easy,” Pruitt said.
In addition to informing people about the challenges that come with a university presidency, he also wanted to preserve the history of what happened during his time at Illinois State and how the University embraced change and grew with it to become what it is today.
“I want the actual history documented, and with this book, I was able to capture a snapshot of what happened. I want people to know what happened, who these people were, and the impact they made on the University,” Pruitt said.
Pruitt’s legacy continues to live on not only in From Protest to President but also in the changes he made at universities across the country, including Illinois State, and in the students he helped along the way.
If you’d like to hear more of Pruitt’s story, listen to him on the Redbird Buzz podcast, available on all podcast platforms.
