[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 152 (Wednesday, September 20, 2023)]
[House]
[Pages H4429-H4430]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            HONORING THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF DR. CAROL HARTER

  (Ms. TITUS asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend her remarks.)
  Ms. TITUS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the life and legacy of 
Dr. Carol Harter, the first female and longest serving president in the 
history of the University of Las Vegas.
  I was fortunate to teach at UNLV during her tenure, where I witnessed 
firsthand her dedication to higher education, her student-centered 
leadership style, and her passion for research and learning. She was a 
recognized scholar, an able administrator, and one tough lady.
  Carol served as president from 1995 to 2006 during one of the 
university's most productive stages: creating 100 new programs, 
overseeing construction of 17 new buildings, and cofounding the 
internationally recognized Black Mountain Institute. It is in large 
part thanks to her that UNLV is a leading institution today.
  My condolences to Carol's family and the entire UNLV community. We 
will remember her through the inimitable footprint she left on campus 
and beyond.
  Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record an article titled, ``Let Her 
Record Prove Them Wrong.''

                    Let Her Record Prove Them Wrong

       President Emerita Carol C. Harter, who broke down barriers 
     while building up UNLV's status as a research institution, 
     passed away at age 82.


                             EDITOR'S NOTE

       UNLV President Emerita Carol C. Harter has passed away 
     Sept. 14, 2023, at age 82. She was UNLV's longest-serving 
     president and steered the university through a period of 
     rapid growth. Her work set the stage for its eventual rise as 
     a top research institution. This story was originally 
     published in September 2022.
       Numerology insists that the number 711 is as lucky as luck 
     can get. Carol C. Harter was UNLV's seventh president. Her 
     tenure lasted 11 years. Do the math and you realize: 
     Numerology nailed it. The president emerita was lucky for 
     UNLV.


                        LEAVING A LASTING LEGACY

       ``In my very first speech I made to the faculty, I said, 
     `We need to be the kind of major urban university that UCLA, 
     or the other great institutions are--because we can do that,' 
     '' recalls Harter, who guided UNLV's impressive growth during 
     her 1995-2006 presidency.
       That was an ambition the longest-serving UNLV president 
     pursued aggressively, with impressive results. To thumbnail 
     her list of accomplishments--not an easy task--consider just 
     a partial legacy list:
       Overseeing unprecedented growth, with the construction of 
     17 new buildings, including the Lied Library.
       Creating 100-plus new degree programs--most notably those 
     conferred by the School of Dental Medicine and the William S. 
     Boyd School of Law, championing the creation of both.
       Putting the university on the path toward a Carnegie-
     designated R1 research institution, a feat it would 
     accomplish in 2018.
       Making UNLV more student-centered and responsive to 
     students' needs.
       Spearheading funding to create the Greenspun College of 
     Urban Affairs.
       Spurring the Invent the Future campaign, at the time the 
     most ambitious fundraising program in UNLV history.
       Cofounding the international literary center, Beverly 
     Rogers, Carol C. Harter Black Mountain Institute, which she 
     continued to lead after departing the presidency.
       Oh, and she also made history as the university's first 
     female president, a milestone she built upon by promoting 
     gender equality on campus and in the community, supporting 
     the creation of the Women's Research Institute of Nevada.
       ``Just keep going--that's my number one piece of advice,'' 
     Harter says she tells young women hoping to carve out 
     academic administration careers similar to hers. ``You know 
     who you are, you're in a position where your education is 
     likely to be at a high level, there's nothing you can't do. 
     And don't let anybody stop you or say, `That's not your job.' 
     ''
       As she rose in her career, Harter often found herself the 
     only woman in a room of executives. ``You may feel 
     uncomfortable,'' she says, ``But, it's not a barrier.''


                      A LOVE OF LITERATURE BLOOMS

       No barriers deterred Harter, whose journey to the heights 
     of academia began humbly in Brooklyn, N.Y., where she was 
     born on June 1, 1941.
       ``We were not rich at all, we lived modestly in a little 
     house,'' she says, fondly recalling the pleasures of a New 
     York upbringing and a working-class life. ``We would go to 
     Jones Beach regularly, where I worked as a clerk, a cashier, 
     and a lifeguard.''
       Harter's dad was a businessman who had earned a degree in 
     finance from New York University, attending at night over 
     many years.
       ``He hoped I would be interested in the business world one 
     way or the other, which in a way you are when you're a 
     president of a university,'' she says.``You're running a 
     major operation, it's a business life as well as an academic 
     one. So, he was very proud of what I did.''
       Her mom, a typical homemaker of the period, took pleasure 
     in her daughter's penchant for reading and creativity.
       ``She was just a darling thing,'' Harter says of her 
     mother. ``She was very supportive all the way and loved the 
     artistic side of me and the literary side.''
       That literary side was apparent early on. First came a 
     classic of young female readership: The Nancy Drew mysteries.
       ``I read every single one of them, one end to the other,'' 
     says Harter, who later happily lost herself to serious 
     literature via a collection purchased by her mom. ``It was 
     beautifully bound in gold and brown and green leather. I read 
     Great Expectations and The Count of Monte Cristo and just 
     many of the classic books that she had collected. I realized 
     when I got to college that I had read many classics, that I 
     had been educating myself.''
       Inspired by a high school teacher, Harter excelled in 
     honors English classes, but also nursed an interest in 
     chemistry, which might have forged her life's path--had she 
     not been discouraged.
       ``When I went to what then was Harpur College (now 
     Binghamton University) and tried to enroll as a chemistry 
     major, the dean of students, who was a woman, said, `You 
     can't do that, women don't do chemistry, you have to do 
     something else.'
       ``She shouldn't have discouraged me like that, she should 
     have encouraged me, but I took her advice and enrolled as a 
     literature major.''
       Still, Harter saw literature as more of an avocation than 
     the launching pad for her eventual career until a faculty 
     member urged her toward graduate studies, eventually earning 
     her bachelor's, master's, and Ph.D in English and American 
     literature.
       Along her collegiate journey, she also met Mike--her 
     husband of 61 years and counting--over a ping pong table in a 
     campus rec room.
       ``I was dating a guy who liked to play, and I would beat 
     him. And Mike was in that rec room watching and he said he 
     wanted to play with me. And of course, he beat me.'' she 
     recalls.
       It was love at first serve, more or less. And who wouldn't 
     trade a table tennis loss for a lifelong love? ``That's for 
     sure,'' she says. They married when she was 19.


                          THE ROAD TO ACADEMIA

       Academia as a career commenced for Harter when she served 
     as dean of students and vice president for administration at 
     Ohio University, a move she chalks up to serendipity.
       While she was working as a faculty member and a campus 
     ombudsperson, the new president sought her out to inquire 
     about student and faculty grievances. After impressing him 
     with her savviness and her ability to work effectively with 
     students and professors, she rose in the administrative 
     ranks.
       Next came a position as the president of SUNY Geneseo. But 
     after six years, job limitations caused her eyes to wander 
     toward other opportunities.
       ``I felt a little trapped in it,'' she says, noting that 
     the system's chancellor at the time didn't make distinctions 
     among the state's institutions when budgets were handed out. 
     ``Being really good didn't have any effect on how much money 
     you got in the budget. Feeling constrained, there wasn't 
     really anything more I could do for the place without more 
     money. We just started looking at

[[Page H4430]]

     what kind of place is likely to be a place where we can use 
     some creativity.''
       Enter a city on the other side of the country, one known 
     for constant reinvention.
       ``It's weird when you're at Geneseo as the president, a 
     little upstate New York liberal arts school and you wind up 
     in a major city that's just growing a major university. I 
     tell you, that is a big move,'' Harter says. ``I've been here 
     25 years and people still ask me, `How the heck did Carol 
     Harter wind up in Las Vegas?' ''
       Here's how the heck she did:
       ``Las Vegas was growing like crazy and the institution was 
     very young and was in competition with Reno to get started. 
     It just made it real attractive to me. It was just an 
     aspirational kind of feeling that we could make something 
     great out of UNLV. And I think it's happened. It's an 
     attractive place for faculty and students, I think.''
       Not that her entrance into the campus community was easy. 
     She had to get past resistance all-too-common to anyone 
     breaking through a glass ceiling. Such issues would follow 
     her throughout her tenure, but Harter was determined to let 
     her record prove them wrong.
       ``Several of the exact people who resisted terribly at the 
     beginning became good friends and supporters, who end up 
     saying, `This person is pretty good.' It helps a lot to 
     strengthen the institution and the presidency.''
       Of all her storied accomplishments, she cites several that 
     stand out, including UNLV's status as an RI research 
     institution.
       ``At that time (when she was named president), we were 
     barely research two, I think we might have even been research 
     three,'' she says. ``It is research one now, which is great, 
     a great accomplishment.''
       Also on the pride list: The launching of professional 
     schools for law, dentistry, and architecture, as well as 
     laying the groundwork for the eventual opening of the Kirk 
     Kerkorian School of Medicine.
       ``It took three years before I could persuade the (NSHE) 
     Board of Regents and the chancellor, that the law school was 
     something we should do,'' she says.
       It is still the only law school in the state.
       ``The architecture program was there as a small program. We 
     made it into a major school with its own faculty and its own 
     facilities. And, we launched 50 graduate programs in my years 
     there as president.''
       Such a fruitful career couldn't end with her presidency--
     and didn't. After leaving the administration, Harter, along 
     with English professor Richard Wiley, cofounded the Black 
     Mountain Institute, headquartered at UNLV, to promote 
     literacy around the globe.
       ``When I knew I was leaving the presidency, I thought I 
     could do it then. So did (Southern Nevada business titan) 
     Glenn Schaeffer, who had been a real supporter of literary 
     activity at UNLV,'' Harter says. ``We felt there was no 
     school in Nevada that really had a literary center that could 
     be a shining light. He came to me and said, `I will invest in 
     it, if you can get something started that we can work on.' ''
       And that brought Carol Harter back to the young girl from 
     Brooklyn who was first entranced by Nancy Drew mysteries. The 
     passion has not dimmed, even as she relaxes at her and her 
     husband's San Diego summer retreat, overlooking the sailboats 
     gliding over Mission Bay.
       ``I'm in a book club,'' she says. ``It's always a novel of 
     one kind or another I read every day, and my husband does 
     too, so we're readers together. I'm the same ol' person.''
       Carol Harter makes Las Vegas--and Brooklyn--justifiably 
     proud.

                          ____________________