Faculty member traces college's strong roots

Neighbor to know

Sandra Alcorn knew George Williams College was special, but she never stopped to think about it until the crisis.

The 15-year instructor had served as director of the social work program for only three months when college leaders announced abruptly that because of financial problems the 101-year-old institution would close in two weeks -- before the beginning of the winter term.

In the chaos and confusion that followed, an incredible thing happened, Alcorn recalled.

Faculty and about 125 students in the social work program pulled together and decided that George Williams would continue.

"We had no buildings. We had no books. We had no classrooms. We had nothing but each other," Alcorn said of that time in 1985 when the Downers Grove college shut down.

Nearby Northern Baptist and Bethany seminaries in Lombard offered the use of their facilities. Loyola University agreed to pay George Williams social work faculty until the end of the school year.

By then, Aurora University invited Alcorn and her program to become George Williams College of AU.

"That was an offer we couldn't refuse," she said.

Alcorn remained the dean of Aurora's new School of Social Work for 17 years, retelling the story of George Williams College to each new group of students.

"It was such an amazing experience how the students responded and the outcome was so much more than you would imagine," Alcorn said. "I want students and other people to know what is possible."

Now four years after her retirement in 2003, Alcorn has put the story in writing: "Strong Roots: A Group Memoir of George Williams College."

"I didn't want a history of just facts. I wanted to capture what George Williams College meant to people," she said.

Working over a three-year period, Alcorn estimates she interviewed 60 or 70 George Williams students and faculty from all generations. She combed the archives to find stories that date back to the college's founding in 1884.

Alcorn soon saw that common themes emerged when people talked about the college, which was named after YMCA founder George Williams and started in Williams Bay, Wis., as a training center for YMCA workers.

The college, which still has a Williams Bay campus, moved to Chicago, Hyde Park, Downers Grove and Aurora. Through the moves, its values remained the same: service to others, caring about the whole person, building community within the college and reaching to the outside community, learning by doing, and reaching around the world.

Alcorn said she had never experienced education the way George Williams did it before joining the college in 1970.

"Their education was always tied to their development as people," Alcorn said. "When a student came, you were interested in everything about them."

Growing up in Brooklyn, N.Y., Alcorn had her first taste of social work in summer experiences with youth in Harlem in the 1960s. She expected to help the disadvantaged, but instead discovered a sense of community that she was to experience again at George Williams. When the crisis occurred, students and faculty acted instinctively on what they had learned, she said.

"If I were somewhere else, I'm sure we would have all gone home or found another job," she said.

Sally McCarthy, a commander at the Warrenville Police Department and a student leader at George Williams when the crisis occurred, said Alcorn played a major role in holding the social work program and its students together.

"I think everybody felt she was there for them," McCarthy said. "You walked away from Sandy and those professors and thought, 'these people care.' "

McCarthy herself, then a nun, transferred to Loyola to complete her graduate work in social work out of a sense of obligation to her religious order to remain in an accredited program. But she sometimes felt she had abandoned ship, she said. Reading Alcorn's book brought back the commitment, the dynamics, the turmoil and triumph she and others experienced, McCarthy said.

"Someone putting all the emotions into words somehow completes the story," she said.

Alcorn said she is sad that not all of George Williams survived. The social work and recreation programs became part of Aurora University, and the organizational development program was absorbed into Benedictine University in Lisle. Some of the other programs were lost.

After a long period of trust-building, George Williams College fully merged with Aurora University in 2000, and the university commissioned Alcorn to write the book.

"Never even cared about writing a book," she said. "This comes straight from the heart."

Several book signings, including one in Aurora, are planned for the coming year. The book sells for $30 and is available online at aurora.edu/strongroots or by calling (630) 844-5486.