John Fry, president of Drexel University, and universities and cities

John A. Fry, president of Drexel University, talks about the challenge of managing a university through the coronavirus. Photo: Michael Bryant, Philadephia Inquirer.

The Philadelphia Inquirer published an interesting interview with John Fry, the president of Drexel University, on his being awarded the William Penn Prize honoring civic leaders, by the city chamber of commerce ("Drexel’s John Fry talks about nurturing biotech, building University City, and why the school wants to mint more engineers"). 

He worked on urban initiatives for University of Pennsylvania, then went to Franklin & Marshall in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, as president for 10 years ("College President as urban planner," PI, 2016), then became president of Drexel in 2010. 

Rather than build on the previous president's initiatives to build a campus in Sacramento, he doubled down on Philadelphia, including such initiatives as:

• investing in the area around the campus, including in the University City District business improvement district (which does a lot of great work) and the 30th Street Station owned by Amtrak
• student retention programs--initially he called for expanding enrollment by 10,000 students, but realized they could have more effect by retaining more of the students they already had
• bought vacant property in the area, stabilizing and improving it, providing space for start ups and university expansion
• expanding the College of Computing and Informatics, not unlike then Mayor Bloomberg's initiative to create an IT school with Cornell and Technion--Philadelphia lost out on the Amazon HQ2 initiative in part because of a dearth of potential tech employees
• created a second medical campus in suburban Philadelphia
• built dorms (through a private firm) to add housing for 3,000 students
• took over the Academy of Natural Sciences and the local history museum, Atwater-Kent, so that they will still exist.

Also see "Drexel came through the pandemic better than expected. Now president John Fry is contemplating his next step," PI.

Other recent entries relevant to higher education institutions and cities are:

-- "Universities as elements of urban/downtown revitalization: the Portland State story and more," 2014

-- "Naturally occurring innovation districts | Technology districts and the tech sector," 2014

-- "Better leveraging higher education institutions in cities and counties: Greensboro; Spokane; Mesa; Phoenix; Montgomery County, Maryland; Washington, DC," 2016

-- "Revisiting past blog entries: College Park as a college town and economic development | PG County and Amazon,," 2018

-- "University President Freeman Hrabowski and an agenda for urban universities," 2021

-- "The other George Miller idea: creating multi-college innovation centers in (cities) Philadelphia | Creating public library-college education centers as revitalization initiatives," 2021

-- "HBCUs and the city: Relocating Cheyney University to Philadelphia?," 2021

-- "Howard University announces wide ranging building program," 2022