Mary Harlan apologized for the condition of her University of Central Arkansas office before she even opened the door, but when someone retires after 38 years in a job, there’s bound to be a lot to pack.
Harlan, chairwoman of the UCA Family and Consumer Sciences Department, will be honored at a reception from 1:30-3:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Mirror Room of McAlister Hall. Wednesday is her official last day on the Conway school’s campus.
“I’ve just loved every minute of it; I can’t believe it’s been 38 years,” she said. After a beat, she added: “Oh, well, I’m sure there were a few minutes there that were challenging.”
The 71-year-old Harlan, who moved from Conway to Searcy in 2007, has had influence on students far and wide. She taught in public school before moving to the university level. Harlan was honored at a reception in June by one of her former UCA advisees, Payne Harding, executive chef and the owner of Cache Restaurant in Little Rock. His father, Rush, is a former chairman of the UCA Board of Trustees.
“He was a perfect gentleman; he was just a delight to work with,” Harlan said of Payne Harding. “I never dreamed he appreciated [my help] so much.”
Harding, who has a bachelor’s degree in family and consumer sciences with an emphasis in nutrition, said Harlan gave him the support and guidance he needed.
He was almost finished with his degree in business when he switched majors.
“I was really discouraged; I remember walking into her office. … I told her I needed to take as many hours as possible. She was just really sweet,” he said. “She really helped me get my classes together. She reminded me of my grandmother at times; we got along really well.”
Harding said that although he was a good student, it was reassuring to have Harlan guide him. Harlan said she also wrote a letter of recommendation for him when he applied and was accepted to the Culinary Institute of America.
Harlan grew up in Mount Vernon, the fifth of sixth Stewart children. Her mother, Effie, was a homemaker, and her father, Sam, was a union carpenter.
“I always knew I wanted to be a teacher,” Harlan said. She recalled playing school and pretending to be the teacher, with her older brother as the principal and her younger sister as the student.
Harlan also played 3-on-3 basketball in high school and “loved, loved to play,” she said.
“I didn’t know if I was going to be a coach, or teach, or both,” Harlan said. Female coaches weren’t as common then as they are now, she said.
She graduated from UCA in 1965 with a Bachelor of Science degree in education and later earned a master’s in education, an educational specialist degree and a doctorate of education with an emphasis in nutrition, all from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.
“The thing about home economics I loved [was] there were so many career opportunities — still are,” she said. However, it took Harlan awhile to get into the classroom like she’d planned.
Her husband and high school sweetheart, Don, was finishing his degree at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. The couple moved to Rogers. She became the home economist for a utility company, traveling 12 counties in Northwest Arkansas teaching food and nut education in high schools and promoting the utility company.
When her husband was hired in the Rogers School District, she applied for a job there, too. The superintendent, Greer Lingle, told her he didn’t have an opening for a teacher, but the Rogers School District needed a dietitian. He promised that if she’d take that job, she could have first choice when a teaching position opened.
“I was like 23, and I had 35 employees and seven cafeterias — talk about an education,” she said, laughing.
Harlan said Lingle had a philosophy that she tries to follow.
“He said he believed in handing out roses while people were still alive and could enjoy it,” she said. “His roses were praise and compliments.”
Mary Ann Campbell, family and consumer sciences instructor at UCA, said Harlan exemplifies that philosophy.
“The environment that Mary creates is the most supportive and enjoyable I’ve ever experienced,” Campbell said. “Mary is always asking, ‘How can I help you be more effective with your students? What do you need?’ With any student problem — and yes, there are students who challenge us — Mary is always calm and directs me with a sense of fairness for all,” Campbell said.
She said Harlan also encourages professional development and suggested that Campbell and three other staff members go through a flexible doctoral program at Iowa State University.
“I’ve never known a more caring and giving supporter, encourager and all-around committed educator and good person. Mary leads by example,” Campbell said. “She spends hours meeting with students and helping them graduate.”
Harlan finally got a chance to get into the classroom, as Lingle promised, as a home-economics teacher at Rogers High School. She described it as going “from the frying pan to the fire,” although she said she loved it. She had seven class periods with 25 students per class, and she was the Future Homemakers of America adviser. By that time, Harlan had earned her master’s degree with an emphasis in nutrition.
She moved to Morrilton when her husband got a job at Petit Jean Technical Institute, now the University of Arkansas Community College at Morrilton.
“I didn’t want to leave Rogers,” Harlan said. She recalled that Lingle asked her, “You mean you’re moving from God’s country?”
Because there wasn’t a teaching position open in the Morrilton schools, she worked for the University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service, based in Russellville, as an area nutrition specialist — the focus was to teach paraprofessionals to go into homes of families in Yell, Conway and Pope counties.
When Harlan’s son, Brian, was born in 1973, she took three years to stay home, and her daughter, Melissa, was born 18 months later.
The Harlans moved to Conway in 1975 when Don became associate director for vocational education for the state Department of Education. She taught what was then called “employability skills” for one year in the Conway Area Careers Center in the Conway School District.
Then, she was hired as instructor of home economics at UCA, and she started on Aug. 16, 1977.
“The following year is when I got to do what I really wanted to do. I wanted to work with student teachers,” she said. Harlan taught classes and also visited school districts all over Arkansas supervising student teachers.
In 1985, she was asked to become interim chairwoman, then chairwoman, of the department of home economics, which became family and consumer sciences in 1995.
“I thought, ‘Oooh, am I ready for that?’” she said. Former Dean Neil Hattlestad encouraged her. She continued to teach, and taught an online class this past spring, graduate-level Current Issues in Family and Consumer Sciences.
Her favorite subject is nutrition, and that’s a primary focus of the Family and Consumer Science program these days, she said. One of the achievements during her tenure is that she wrote the proposal for a graduate dietetic-internship program, which was approved in 1991 and continues today as an accredited program — one of only two such programs in Arkansas, she said.
Harlan is a registered dietitian, and she credits her healthy eating for the fact that she doesn’t take any medication.
“I rarely even take a Tylenol,” she said.
Other highlights of her UCA career include creating an interior-design program, the proposal for which she wrote. One of the first people she called upon for help was Georg Andersen of Conway, an interior designer who has worked on projects all over the world.
“The interior design department at UCA would be nonexistent without the vision of Mary Harlan,” Andersen said. “I gave her the seed thought, and she and [former UCA President] Win Thompson implemented what I support as the finest interior-design course west of the Mississippi.”
Harlan also established the Alumni Recognition and Student Scholarship Recognition program, and UCA has held an annual event for that program for 28 years. The list goes on.
“There’s none of this I have done alone,” Harlan said. “I’ve had wonderful administrative support.”
Harlan said that when she retires, she and her husband plan to travel more. She might go visit a great-niece in Ireland, her grandchildren are at top of the list, and she has two tickets on the 50-yard line for a Dallas Cowboys game in September, thanks to the appreciation of former student Harding and his father.
“I’ve just had wonderful people to work with and work for,” she said. “It makes life fun. I couldn’t ask for a more positive career than I’ve been fortunate enough to have.”
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.