Hello, Anne!

HELLO, ANNE

Earlham’s 20th president is ready to meet your best you.

Anne Houtman is Earlham's 20th president. She's the first Quaker in that role for some years, the first natural scientist since Joseph Moore, and the very first woman.

“I think Earlham has something so unique to offer the world because of its Quaker foundations,” she says, pointing out the College’s commitment to its Principles & Practices, the statement of the values that Earlham has adopted. Those foundations also give her a strong sense of how the community will work together. “Whether you are a student, member of faculty and staff, or on the Board of Trustees, we will treat everyone with respect and care for each other.” It’s an approach, as Houtman explains it, that’s both practical and hopeful. “When you approach someone as if they are their best self, you invite them to give you back their best self.”

Houtman came to Earlham from Rose- Hulman Institute of Technology, where she served as provost. Before that, she was a dean at California State University, Bakersfield and a program head at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. She’s been in academic leadership roles for more than two decades, but even when she was primarily teaching, a role she loves, her aptitude for leadership was tapped to direct and manage academic programs.

“Leadership roles offer opportunities to have a larger impact, to help even more students by supporting and working with the faculty,” she says. “That’s why I chose to become a department head, a dean, a provost and now a president.”

Houtman and her husband Will Prouty have made the move from their farm in western Indiana, bringing dogs, a cat, and as many chickens as city regulations allow. She and Will, a retired lithographic photographer who managed their farm, have two adult children, Abi and Ben. Abi works in publishing, and Ben is continuing his college studies at Earlham.

The president’s house will be a welcoming place, according to Houtman. She and Will plan to invite groups and guests there. She’ll make time in her office hours for guests as well, but she knows that the best way to meet people is to go where they are. “Students, for example, have a lot going on in their lives,” she says. “So, you go to them. We’ll figure out what works to do that, and we’ll bring food.”

She’s eager to be a part of the broader Earlham community as well, getting to know Earlhamites from years past.

“I think it’s so important for our alumni to know they’re still an integral part of us,” she says “There is no better example of the power of this place to change people’s lives than our alumni. And not just the graduates themselves, but the lives of their families, organizations and communities. That’s the true influence of Earlham.”

So, get ready to say hello. Anne’s here, and she’s looking forward to meeting your best you.

Getting Started

As a child, Houtman was curious and earnest, the kind of kid that gave school her best and sneaked books under the covers at night to keep reading.

Houtman remembers bringing home her report card as a third grader. Her parents read it over, looking at one row of high marks after another. “It’s so boring,” her dad said, deadpan. Houtman was speechless. She’d done it wrong somehow. She should have left room for improvement? They had to reassure Houtman that she had done it right: “It’s OK, that’s just a joke. You did the right thing.”

At age 10 the family moved to Hawaii when her father got a job there as an airline ticket agent. Houtman’s love of nature bloomed on the white sand beaches of Kailua Bay and while hiking on Oahu and the outer islands.

As a strong student, college seemed like a natural next step for Houtman. Coming out of high school she knew she wanted to be a scientist, possibly a zoologist, but anthropology won her over at Pomona College. After graduating from Pomona, she earned a National Science Foundation Pre- Doctoral Fellowship to extend her studies in the field of anthropology. But during her master’s work on decision making in tuna fishing at UCLA, she reconsidered what she wanted to study for her doctorate. What intrigued her was behavioral ecology, especially that of birds. The most promising place to study that was 8,600 miles away at Oxford University in England.

“Oxford felt like the center of the universe at that point because behavioral ecology really developed there. It was just so exciting, and I was surrounded by so many hardworking, brilliant people.”

She earned her doctorate there, working in zoology. A postdoc opportunity in

Richmond, along with their pets and as many chickens as city regulations allow.

Toronto followed, and it was tempting to stay on a research-only track, but Houtman knew she wanted to teach, and she had a sense of how she wanted to teach as well.

“My graduate studies reinforced what I learned at Pomona College, a liberal arts school a lot like Earlham,” she says. “Students learn best when they own the work they’re doing and it feels authentic to them. I started having undergraduate students do research with me at Oxford, and since then I have always had undergraduates working with me on my research.”

Ramping Up

In the latter half of her career, she has flourished as an academic administrator, and while she could point to grants won, programs restructured and strategies implemented, she misses teaching, especially first-years.

“There’s so much that’s new to them. They are on their own, figuring out how to read a syllabus, finding their way academically,” says Houtman. “I just love teaching them. I mean, I love all students, and all levels have great things to offer, but teaching them early in their college years is wonderful.” Similar reasons led her to authoring textbooks for nonmajors in biology and environmental science.

Her biggest transformation as a professor happened while at Knox College in Illinois. She had been thinking about teaching in general — that she was supposed to be teaching for a certain kind of outcome, namely to make academic clones of herself.

It hit her squarely during one of her large lecture hall classes. Nearly a hundred students watched her teaching Introductory Biology class as usual, and then she paused. The day’s lesson felt obligatory, esoteric.

“I can still remember standing there with my arms in the air talking to them and just thought, ‘Oh my gosh. What am I doing? These are nonmajors. Why am I spending all this time teaching them the Hardy-Weinberg theorem?’ It’s tortuous theory that we all feel we need to teach in Introductory Biology.”

She made it a rule that when she designed her classes, she’d ask new questions of herself: “If this were the last science class that a student ever takes, what do I want her to take away from it? If she’s going to be my senator or my president, what does she need to know? That changed everything.

“What I decided is that I needed to share how scientists think,” she says, “how the process of science works, and especially how, as a citizen, you should evaluate the incredible number of scientific claims that are thrown at you every single day.”

Her eye for what is essential and lasting is matched by her enthusiasm, an excitement for students as they learn and grow as people — excitement for the breakthroughs, newfound intellectual grace, and lessons learned in collegiality and friendship. Her positivity is hard to miss and there is no doubt it has an anchor point in her faith.

“As a Quaker you understand ‘that there is something of God’ in everyone,” she says, “and then you treat people in a

way that reflects that. It influences the whole way I approach my life.”

It was at Oxford that Houtman went to her first Quaker meeting. She remembers it being a very settled meeting, beginning with a long silence. A woman, perhaps in her 80s, rose and spoke of returning from Palestine and continuing with a Quaker meeting despite the tanks that had just surrounded their building. Another woman spoke of protesting the nuclear arsenal at a nearby military base and being arrested. “I was just, ‘Oh my,’” says Houtman. “These were incredible, powerful women right there living their faith in a way that I just didn’t even imagine was possible.” From that day forward, she has been a convinced Friend.

That Quaker link was also a major reason she was attracted to Earlham.

“Earlham was started by people who believed it offered something very special and was well worth the hard work to launch and maintain,” she says. “I believe that too. That’s why I am here. We’re just a few years from our 175th anniversary. I’m really looking forward to celebrating that and then planning out for the next 175 years. When you look back at the history of Earlham and of higher education in America in general, there have been real squeeze points economically and otherwise. We have been persistent through them because it’s worth it. The world is a better place with more Earlhamites in it. And that is why we keep at it. We need to do well so that we can continue to do good.”