Illustration by Ryan Spahr
Last month, Harrisburg University of Science and Technology marked its 10-year anniversary. The school began in September 2015 with 73 full-time equivalent students. This year, HU will have 2,200 undergrad and graduate students enrolled.
We used the occasion to interview Dr. Eric Darr, who has been with H.U. since its inception and has served as its president for the past three years. We asked him to look back at the school’s founding and ahead to its future.
TheBurg: How did you come to be involved with Harrisburg University?
Dr. Darr: About 2001 or 2002, the idea for university was floated to the state, and the state system passed. And Steve Reed, as we know, not to be denied, put together a group of consultants about what would be a new university—really around the academic side of this—and I was one of those five people who was approached.
“Eric can you help us out? You were an academic. You understand that part of it. You run a technology business. You helped found businesses. Starting a university is like starting any other business.”
For a lot of reasons, it made sense for me to help thing about it. And I looked at it, as a lot of people did—oh, this is an interesting kind of exercise. Then, a year or so in, it became apparent that the Department of Ed and others—Jeff Piccola—and some others at the time actually believed that this could happen. And so, in 2004, it became, to me, I guess, real, and I became the chief financial officer. I left the software company and started full-time here. I think there were four or five of us, and I became the chief financial officer. And I’ve been here ever since.
So, I helped design the underpinnings of the application to the Department of Education and what would be a new university, and we have a very different faculty model. We have a very different structure to our general education, and we have a manic focus on experiential opportunities for our students. And all that was from the very beginning laid out in the roadmap of what would be Harrisburg University, and I was fortunate enough to be part of the thinking in those early days.
So, that’s how I ended up here. I’ve been the chief financial officer. I’ve been the provost, been executive vice president, and now I’m in my third year as president.
Q: What would you say would be the greatest achievement during this period of the university?
Darr: The good news and the bad news is that it’s not easy to start a new university, at least in Pennsylvania, and particularly one in the model of not-for-profit, independent, comprehensive university. It’s not something you can wake up on a Tuesday and say, “I’m going to go do this.” And so actually getting that done through the legislature, through the accrediting body, was a significant accomplishment in and of itself.
I can still remember the feeling of—and, as you know, it is now 10 years in September, of the first day of having classes and feeling like, you know, you’ve put together a party, and you’re not quite sure who’s going to show up. Then, when they show up, are they going to get along or not? You know, you have a broad guest list, and you’re not quite sure. That’s kind of the sense we had: “Wow, we’re really having students, and we’re really conducting classes. This is like a real thing.” We’ve come a long way since that day. So, that’s a significant accomplishment.
I’d say another significant thing in the journey of Harrisburg University is the building itself. You know, good or bad, right or wrong, people criticized the construction of the building, the financing of the building. In some sense, at this point, it’s passed, and let’s just move on. But, at the time, we were fortunate to be able to raise the money to build this building.
I’ve thought about—what would the university be without this? Or if we had tried to just use rented space. And, if you know the history, we did, while this building was being constructed—space in the train station, space in Strawberry Square. If that were the path we had pursued for more years, could we have been successful? Maybe, at the time, this (building) was too big. Today, with our growth over the last two years, we’ve already outgrown this building. So, today, this is not enough of a building. But, as a startup business, two or three or four years in, it probably was too much of a building.
With an academic endeavor, you just can’t go rent more office space as you need more office space. That’s not the way it works for a university. So, I look at it, and I say: This was a significant accomplishment. And anybody you talk to—this is a fantastic building. It works well for the students. It works well for the curriculum that we want to deliver. It’s a unique physical structure. It works 95-percent of the way we designed it way back when to work. How many people can say that, 10 years in, a building they designed still meets all of their needs, other than it’s not big enough yet right now for us. So, that’s a significant accomplishment.
I think the hiring of faculty and recruiting of faculty, and the people who are here—to me, at the end of the day, that’s the thing that I’m most proud of. I look at the building and say, “I contributed to the skyline of Harrisburg.” But the people are really what makes the university and are why we’ve been successful. And, so, recruiting really smart people and keeping them here. Putting together a fantastic team and keeping them together—that’s significant.
Q. The financing of the university was unconventional, to say the least, and Dauphin County (which backed HU’s bonds) has had to pay some of your bond payments. How do you perceive the university’s finances, how will you be self-sustaining going forward? How is that issue evolving?
A. Well, we will be self-sustaining going forward. We’re now at a size where that’s not an issue. Historically, just to be clear, the bonds on this building are not at all like the bonds that have been called into question with regard to the incinerator or other things, meaning the city was not involved, and the taxpayers in the city itself were not at risk.
The county was a limited partner, meaning their exposure was limited per year. So, by and large, we’ve had to stand on our own. Yes, the county has helped, and the county has helped tremendously. They’ve been great partners, and I hope they’re great partners going forward—whether we need the funds to make bond payments or whether we would request monies for innovative programs or technology pathways that help county workers or in other ways. I look at the partnership and say, “Maybe it’s been of one form in the past three or four years, but maybe it takes a different form moving forward.” By all accounts, the university, our employees, our students, the money we spend, the real estate that our employees purchase—all of that helps Dauphin County. I would look to the county to remain a partner even as the university financially gets to a point where we’re on our own.
Q. Do you know when that might be?
Darr: Now. So, we have a bond payment due on Monday (Aug. 31). We’ll make that payment. This is the first year that principle payments are due on the bond, and we made that payment back in June. Right now, we’re making those payments on our own. We also made our payment in March, and I anticipate that going forward.
Q. What do you see as some of your biggest challenges over the next couple of years?
Darr: So, two years ago, we had some 500 or 550 degree-seeking students. Last year, we had around 1,400 degree-seeking students; this year, around 2,200. So, that’s what leads to the financial stability. But, to accommodate growth like that, you need the physical space as I alluded to—lab space, classroom space, office space for faculty, all of those things, which I can’t just go to Harristown next door and say, “I want to rent some empty space. It just doesn’t work.”
So, in the next year or two, we’ll finish off the floor and a half that’s unfinished in this building and, frankly, we’ll look to others for buildings that may be around us. So, for example, in September, with a partner, there will be a small new media business accelerator that opens up just down the alley here in a building across from where Messiah is located. Again, a small building, a start. But it’s a building that’s been sitting vacant for years that is now renovated, and it’ll be an interesting place, and there will be four or five new media startups that are affiliated with the university that will be in that space. I envision more of those kinds of partnership spaces, not just pure university academic space. We’ll need more housing. We have three student housing buildings now and, over the next five years, we’ll need more of that. So, the good news there is that, unfortunately, there are buildings and spaces that are not used to their maximum capacity sitting all around us. So, there is opportunity. And we would look to development partners to help in that kind of expansion. So, that’s one.
The other is, frankly, the hiring of faculty. We have to meet the needs of now nearly 2,000 additional students, and, if I look at next year, there’s no reason why we won’t get close to 3,000 students. So, from a faculty perspective—we’ve hired 12 new full-time faculty since March, and we have plans to hire 20 more full-time in the next year. On top of that, we’ve hired 35 part-time faculty since March with plans to hire somewhere between 50 and 70 in the next year. So, there’s a challenge of doing that because, again, considering the types of programs we have, you look for Ph.D.’s, highly successful people in cyber-security, data analytics and network architecture. I’m not just competing against other universities. I’m competing with industry for all of that talent, as well. So, we’ve had to look globally for the faculty that have come. And that kind of matches our growth in the international student area, as well. So, we’ve hired two Indian faculty, Pakistani, a Romanian, an Iraqi as part of all of the faculty. So, it’s kind of a mini-U.N. downstairs. But I look at that and say, “That’s great in terms of diversity. That’s great for the region. That’s great for Harrisburg University.” Our students benefit from having multiple perspectives and smart people that have grown up in different parts of the world.
So, to answer your question, space and faculty will be our two biggest challenges over the next two to three years, just keeping up with the growth.
Q. What do you credit this recent growth in your student population?
Darr: Of the last 10 years, we spent eight years building an undergraduate institution. That was geared to attract and retain, by and large, traditional-age undergraduates. In doing that, we attracted really talented, student-centered faculty, people who cared an awful lot about the success of students. So, the faculty had to be very student-centered in their approach. And, while some do research, this is not a research university, in terms of our focus.
So, a byproduct of that early work was really great student attention, high-quality education and an emerging strength in technology, somewhat driven by the employers in the region, like Highmark, Penn National Insurance, PSECU, Holy Spirit, etc. These are all very different businesses, but, in terms of their back end businesses, they’re all very sophisticated technological institutions. Highmark, particularly, is world-class in its technology sophistication in what it does. So, being driven over a period of years by the needs of those employers, we became, as an institution, really good at some really hard things from a technology perspective.
And, every year, you sit around and say, “How can we attract more students? What do we have that’s interesting? What do we have that we can market, to what groups?” So, after a period of years, you list off what do you have? So, we have affordable education, student-centered faculty, sophisticated technology capabilities. What don’t we have? We don’t have 100-year-old brand. We don’t have bands. We don’t have athletic teams or fields. We don’t have sororities or fraternities. We don’t have those sorts of things.
So, what kinds of students are interested in what we have and don’t care about what we don’t have? So, you start thinking and immediately graduate students come to mind because, by and large, graduate students don’t go to grad school for the bands and the intramurals and clubs. They had all that, right? They either wanted it and got it in their undergrad or they didn’t want it. But what they care about is an affordable way to improve their skills so they can get a better job, so they can climb the ladder. So, we started thinking—graduate students.
The brand issue—the fact that we’re only 10 years old, and we don’t really have a brand per se, led us to think about international students. As Americans, we’re somewhat brand-conscious, whether it’s universities or jeans or cars or shirts or whatever. International students are less so. So, a couple of years ago, we tried to recruit Chinese students, not very successfully. English is still an issue, by and large, with Chinese students. Some people have successfully put in English as second language programs, but it takes money to do that, and we didn’t have money at the time to do that. So, if you think outside of China—what’s the second biggest group that comes into the United States? It’s Indian students, and Indian students, at least in many parts of India, English is the language of instruction. And, technical sophistication—Hyderabad and Bangalore are probably two of the technology centers around the world, let alone in India. So, it fit very well with our strengths, and our weaknesses are mitigated because that’s not what, by and large, Indian graduate students care about.
So, two years in, you talk to the 1,500, 1,600, 1,700 graduate student we have, and ask them: What attracts you to Harrisburg University? And it’s the quality of education at an affordable price in an attractive location. It sounds pretty simple, right? But we had spent six, seven, eight years building that and aiming it particularly at an undergrad population. And, in the last two years, our growth has been driven because we then went out and took our strengths and aimed it at a population that was more attracted to what we had spent time building. We probably couldn’t have done this from the very beginning because we didn’t have it in place at the very beginning. So, the struggles of the early years allowed us to go reach and be attractive to the graduate students that we’ve now been successful in recruiting over the last two years.
We look at that as an amazing opportunity for the region because these are technically sophisticated students, many have families, many may already have a graduate degree from an international university. From a technology perspective, they’re as sophisticated and talented as you’re ever going to want to find. So, to the employers of this region that need technology workers, here are hundreds if not thousands of technology workers that will be available.
But this is a problem that we see. The firms in northern New Jersey near New York or in the DC area have already recognized the population of Harrisburg University in terms of these graduate students and are snapping them up. So, to the employers of this region: I say, “Wake up, here’s a great opportunity for you.” Part of that is that we just haven’t marketed it as aggressively as we perhaps should. But this is a tremendous opportunity for the region in terms of this population of graduate students.
Q. Do you find that a lot of these international students after they graduate stay in this country?
Darr: Absolutely. For the vast majority, that’s what they want to do. Something that I learned is that the Harrisburg region is the sixth-fastest growing Indian population in the United States. It’s driven by Indian entrepreneurs who settled in Central PA decades ago, have been successful, have become very successful. That attracted others. They’ve had good experiences. This is a great place to raise a family, and the momentum just keeps growing.
Q. Your model for expansion seems to be the urban school model, like a place like George Washington University.
Darr: That was one of the visions when the place was founded, to have a positive influence on the city of Harrisburg, and I think you’ve seen in during the last 10 years just in our little dusty corner of the world here: this building itself, the student housing buildings. All of those used to be abandoned buildings, more or less, and now they’re renovated and are fantastic buildings. The attraction of some number of vendors—the store that’s downstairs is a bigger version of a food store than probably has been seen in this part of Harrisburg in awhile. The art store that’s downstairs that’s aimed at students. That’s another interesting addition. The Subway that came in. These are not great cultural icons. Nonetheless, they represent economic activity and growth and vibrancy to this part of the world. Our view would be that that’s only going to expand as we get bigger. And it’s certainly part of our plan. And we have no illusions that we will do it alone. We have partners already. We’ll look to use other partners. Harristown, for decades, has been an active developer in this part of the region, and we’re connected physically and emotionally to them, and we look to work with them. We’re an urban school, we’re an urban campus, so absolutely.
We have an interesting new partnership with Pavone. Where they’re physically located down Market Street represents a future direction for us, I think. I’ve already talked to them about what we might do together in that part of the city.
Q. Harristown is now renovating old office space into apartments. Do you foresee any of your students living in those?
Darr: Absolutely. So, we have students living in Harristown spaces this year. As they expand and though I can’t predict better than anyone else the housing market here in Harrisburg and what’s good or bad, I will say that we’ll need housing as our undergraduate population grows. And even our graduate population—our plans moving forward is to put in place a doctoral program. Well, a doctoral program means you have graduate students—doctoral students—who are living and working here full time in the city. They will need something other than an undergrad circumstance. They’ll want their own apartments that can support families. You’ll see that in the future, as well. So, I applaud Harristown for what it’s doing: renovating, reusing buildings here in Harrisburg that have sat vacant for awhile. I think that’s great. They are bullish on what we’re doing, what Messiah is doing, what Temple might do. Again, I look at that and say that’s good for the university. I don’t look at that as competition. Our programs are very different. The kinds of students we serve are different. And much like George Washington and the universities that are in DC that are all kind of clustered together, in some sense, it’s good that they all play together. It’s good for the vibrancy, for the education, for the aura that is there. To the extent that can be built here in Harrisburg, that’s great.
Q. Is there something you’d like to say about your 10th anniversary?
Darr: We have three events planned over the next eight months to celebrate the 10th anniversary. You’ll see some marketing changes, banner changes. I think the university will want to be recognized a little bit more on how we stuck our heads down and just tried to work down and pull ourselves out of the financial challenges we had over the last couple of years. Now, heading into our 10th anniversary with a few nickels to rub together, I think you’ll see some more come out of the university in terms of who we are and where we think we’re going—and celebrating the support we’ve gotten from people like the county commissioners and others who have stood by us and supported us through the years. We’ll thank them and then look to the future to look forward during our 10th year. For us, it’s a great opportunity to celebrate the past but also a launching pad for the future. There’s nothing more exciting than bringing in faculty and professionals into the university, but also to continue to expand a growing city.
Even though we’re growing on the graduate side of the business, we haven’t forgotten the roots of the institution in regards to servicing of the undergraduates and particularly students who otherwise wouldn’t have success. So, this year, for the third year in a row, we held tuition constant in a world where everybody around us continues to increase their tuition. We talk to students every day about how they can’t afford an education and don’t believe that they can be successful. So, we’re trying everything in our power to make sure the education here is as affordable as possible and to extend to the students who need the help as much financial help as possible. So, again, we’re not or the first or the last university to do this. You make money on one set of students, then you help and subsidize another set of students. So, we still see that as a critical part of what we’re doing—providing students here in Harrisburg, York, Reading, Philadelphia with opportunities that they might not otherwise have in science and technology. So, we’re proud of our ability to hold tuition constant in the face of rising costs and healthcare that we have no control over. We’re fairly proud of that accomplishment.
