By Marjory J. Sente

Education has been a priority for the citizens of Prescott for a very long time. One of Prescott’s first public buildings was a log cabin schoolhouse, a replica of which is located on the grounds of Sharlot Hall Museum. St. Joseph’s Academy and the Prescott Free Academy were both established in the 1870s.

The growing community, however, needed more educational opportunities. Following World War II, the town’s leaders began to focus on establishing an institution for higher education. One of those leaders was the minister of Prescott’s First Congregational Church, the Rev. Dr. Charles Franklin Parker (1902-1983), who, from the time he moved to Prescott in 1934, believed that the mile high city was an ideal location for a college.

In 1947, the Chamber of Commerce and Prescott’s Baptist congregation attempted to establish a local college called Grand Canyon College. This first attempt failed, when two years later, the Baptist Convention received a donation of land in Glendale and decided to reestablish the college in the Valley of the Sun. Prescott’s loss of Grand Canyon College gave Dr. Parker the impetus to call upon his church’s tradition of supporting higher education in America. Beginning in 1636 with Harvard and followed by Yale (1701), Dartmouth (1769) and Amherst (1863), Congregational churches founded more than 50 leading colleges and universities in America. Dr. Parker began to promote his dream of a "Harvard of the West" which would be named Prescott College.

By 1962, Parker’s vision began to materialize. In March of that year, the Prescott College Founding Fund was established with a local campaign goal of $1 million. Parker’s campaign slogan was, "It’s up to you in ’62! To Open the Door in ’64!" While still the minister of the Prescott Congregationalist Church, Parker organized a team of local volunteers who raised $1,048,062. These were monetary gifts; gifts-in-kind, such as a prize calf, mining claims, and a concert piano; and pledges. In six months the community came together and laid the financial cornerstone for the new college.

At the close of 1962, Parker resigned as minister of the First Congregational Church, the post he held for nearly 30 years, to become the "Founding President" of Prescott College. He worked tirelessly over the next few years to open the college’s doors. This included procuring a grant from the Ford Foundation that, in 1963, brought one hundred leaders from around the country to Phoenix to develop a concept for a progressive liberal arts college.

In 1965, Dr. Ronald C. Nairn was appointed the first operating president and the following year Prescott College welcomed the charter class of 70 students at its new campus located at the current site of Embry Riddle Aeronautical University on Willow Creek Road.

As noted in Samuel Nyal Henrie’s, "Uncommon Education: The History and Philosophy of Prescott College, 1950s through 2006," Dr. Parker is quoted, in 1965, "We have come a long way in the past eleven years when no one really thought that a college in Prescott would come into being. These have been times of disappointment and joy, near defeat and finally attainment. I have had my part. I have run my lap in the race."

In 2010, Prescott College is beginning a new lap in the race with the election and inauguration of Dr. Kristin R. Woolever as the College’s fourteenth president. From Dr. Parker to Dr. Woolever, Prescott College continues to grow in stature as the "Harvard of the West."

(Marjory Sente is the Interim Director of Development at Prescott College.)

Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(Courtesy of Prescott College) Reuse only by permission.

The Rev. Dr. Charles Franklin Parker, "Founding President" of Prescott College, 1962.