November 9, 2005

Savannah native to give centennial lecture

Dr. Jenifer Harr

MARYVILLE, Mo. -Dr. Jenifer Harr, senior research analyst with the Education and Human Development Program of the American Institutes for Research, will deliver the next Northwest centennial alumni lecture at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 7, in Charles Johnson Theatre on the first floor of the Olive DeLuce Fine Arts Building.

The title of Harr’s talk is “Made in Missouri: Lessons Learned by a Former Small-Town Girl in a Flattening World.”

A native of Savannah, Harr graduated summa cum laude from Northwest in 1996 with a degree in government. She went on to earn a master’s degree in social policy from the University of York in England and a doctorate in education from Cambridge University.

At AIR, Harr directs national, state and district-level studies on a range of educational initiatives and policies. She also assists state governments in evaluating special education funding and is currently leading a two-year comprehensive evaluation of an intervention program targeting low performing schools in California.

Named an Overseas Research Student Award recipient by Cambridge in 1998, Harr also earned academic distinction as a British Marshall Scholar and Harry S. Truman Scholar. She was Northwest’s Political Science Student of the Year in 1995 and Northwest Missouri’s Young Woman of the Year in 1992.

In kindergarten, Harr was diagnosed with progressive hearing loss and later, while a senior at Northwest, received a cochlear implant. During what would have been her final year at Cambridge, she was stricken with a nearly fatal case of bacterial spinal meningitis.

During her presentation, Harr will discuss these personal tests as well challenges faced by higher education in retaining the nation’s economic lead in the 21st century.

Harr was nominated as a centennial speaker by Northwest’s Department of History, Humanities, Philosophy and Political Science.

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