Told he would “never go to college,” Charles Lepper has made it his mission to provide students equitable access to higher education, most recently bringing him to West Michigan, where he has taken on leadership of Grand Rapids Community College.
Lepper was unanimously chosen by GRCC trustees to be the institution’s next president in November, following months of searching and deliberation after the departure of Bill Pink.
In January, Lepper stepped into his new role, bringing with him seven years as vice president of student affairs and enrollment at Salt Lake Community College in Utah where he oversaw over 60,000 students.
So far, Lepper said he’s had a very warm welcome from the West Michigan community as he settles in.
“It’s been a goal of mine for a long, long time to be a community college president,” he said. “Now that I am one, I’m really enjoying the experience. I’ve had a tremendously warm welcome from staff and students in the community and I get up every day excited to come to the office. It’s been a lot of work and a lot of learning and a lot of meeting folks, but I wouldn’t trade it.”
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CHARLES LEPPER Organization: Grand Rapids Community College Position: President Age: 48 Birthplace: Fortville, Indiana Residence: House hunting for a home in the Grand Rapids area. Biggest Career Break: “Dr. Patricia Dolly hired me for my first job at a community college and encouraged me to pursue my doctorate and to think about someday being a college president.” |
Lepper has a long and storied history with education, starting generations ago with his great-great grandparents.
Despite being uneducated themselves and illiterate, Lepper’s great-great grandparents knew the value of education. Together, Sally Dixon and her husband, William, gave land and supported the start of what was called Pine Mountain Settlement School in Harlan County, Kentucky, shortly after the Civil War. The school, which is now part of Berea College, was geared toward those who did not have access to education, helping make sure people in Appalachia’s Harlan County were able to have the schooling the Dixons did not.
“In some ways, I feel like I’m carrying on their work 150 years later,” Lepper said.
Lepper himself is no stranger to the struggles of education.
“I think one of the things that I often share with people is I’m a first-generation college graduate,” he said. “I started in developmental mathematics, and I was told by my assistant high school principal that I would never go to college. That really drives my passion for higher education and really for access and encouraging others.”
Now, Lepper has gone from an overlooked high school student to president of a college, an achievement he said wouldn’t have been possible without the help and encouragement of his friends and family.
When he watched from Utah via computer as GRCC placed its vote for president, Lepper said he was nervous, but hopeful.
“I had my parents watching as well, so I was watching in Utah and they were watching in Indiana, so they got to see that moment with me,” he said.
He added that offering encouragement to students and peers to help them succeed is vital, as he knows the support of others helped him get to where he is now.
“When I began my doctoral work, I still didn’t think that that was something that I would actually be successful at doing,” he said. “My supervisor at the time, whose name was Dr. Pat Dolly, she hired me for my first job at a community college. And it was really her encouragement, her mentoring, her support that said, ‘You need to do this, and one day you should be a community college president.’
“She’s still the mentor to me, 20-plus years later. And it was important for me to have that someone else seeing that something or (having) that belief in me, that I can do this.”
Dolly, who served as president of Oakland Community College, was from Grand Rapids and had connections with GRCC.
Lepper, who got his master’s degree from Grand Valley State University, said his first job out of graduate school was as residence hall director of Western Michigan University. Spending time at both universities gave him a solid background in the West Michigan community from early in his career.
“I see that as a huge opportunity and really a strength coming into the transition because I know some folks in the community and that I’ve been able to reconnect,” he said. “I hear their perspective on not only the community, but their perspective on GRCC. And some of those folks are in leadership positions or have been in leadership positions in the community, so they can also help me make connections and navigate some of the processes to make sure that I’m getting to the tables and the conversations that I need to as the leader of GRCC. That’s really what I’m focused on right now, is making those connections in the community and building those relationships. But I do feel like I have a kind of a leg up, if you will, because of people in the community that I’ve known and maintained relationships with over the past 25 years.”
Coming into his new role, however, Lepper said he wants to be respectful and conscious of the hard work by GRCC leaders before him who have grown the college to where it is today.
“I think that together we’ll just continue to build on this success and find new ways to be successful, but we’ll do that together,” he said. “I don’t think it’s my place to come in six weeks into a job and say, we need to do this, or we should stop doing that. That really doesn’t honor the work and the success of the people who have helped the institution to be successful and our students be successful. That just reinforces the importance of that collaboration and relationship and setting those visions together and achieving them together.”
He said he is honored to follow in the footsteps of GRCC’s interim president, Juan Olivarez.
“Dr. Olivarez has just been so kind to me in my transition and has become a friend and a mentor and we’ll continue to be friends for a long time,” Lepper said.
When he isn’t leading GRCC, Lepper said he likes to flex his creative muscles by learning to cook. During the pandemic he said he decided to learn to cook and took some virtual and in-person courses to hone his skills. Recently, he has been delving into the art of canning and learning to preserve his own salsa, peaches, pickles and pears — much to his enjoyment.
“It’s a creative outlet for me because I can’t do anything else. I can’t draw, I can’t paint or anything of that sort, and so cooking allows me to be creative and a little artistic,” he said. “I like the challenge of learning something new or creating something I’ve never cooked before.”
Lepper has been making an effort to connect with his students, recently visiting them at the GRCC Institution for Culinary Education.
“(I had the) fun opportunity of being able to go into a pastry class where it was croissant day and they had a croissant and pastry buffet set up for me,” he said. “I got to hear about what they had learned and how they were doing that, and also got some tips and got to do a little pastry decorating with them. It was great to interact with our students and to have that experience as well.”
Lepper is putting down roots and settling into his new role with humility as he looks to engage the community and his students to create a strong future for GRCC.
“I’m excited, eager and thankful to have this opportunity and will give it my best effort every single day because I do consider it an honor and a privilege and I’m happy that I get to have that opportunity,” he said. “Not many people get to live their dream. And I get to.”
