Name: Willyerd R. Collier Sr.
Your background: I am a native of East Chicago IN. Graduated from East Chicago Washington High School Senior Class President and elected most likely to succeed in 1971. I am the oldest of six children and one of the first high school graduates on either side of my family to have the opportunity to attend college. I graduated from Wabash in 1975, the University of Iowa, College of Law in 1978. I was admitted to the State Bar of Georgia in 1979 and practiced law in Georgia for ten years. I returned to Iowa in 1988 and began a career in higher education as a member of the staff of the Office of Affirmative Action and the University of Iowa and in 1994 became the founding director of the Office of Affirmative Action at the University of Arkansas where I served for 17 years before serving as the Assistant Vice Provost for Diversity for 2 years before returning to Wabash.
Studies at Wabash: I was committed to going to law school after Wabash and majored in in Political Science because Professor David Hadley convinced me that political science was “pre-law”. I majored in Speech by accident because I really enjoyed the late Professor Vic Powell and Joe O’Rourke. I did not realize that I was a Speech major until I was told by my advisor Professor George Lovell during my junior year that I had completed all of the requirements for a Speech major.
Special involvement at Wabash: I was heavily involved at the Malcolm X Institute from 1971 through 1975. I served as Student Chair in 1972. Under the tutelage of Horace Turner as Director of the Malcolm X Institute, I was one of the students who championed the teaching of courses in the old Malcolm X Institute on Wabash Avenue. I was a two time Baldwin Oratorical Finalist. I served as a member of the Board of Trustees before stepping down to serve as Special Assistant to President Hess and Director of the Malcolm X Institute.
Favorite part of Wabash: The way that the administrations that served Wabash since my graduation in 1975 have managed to maintain a faculty that has not sacrificed the teaching of undergraduate students at the altar of research as has been done at far too many colleges and universities.
Favorite place on the campus: The Malcolm X Institute
Favorite food: Bar B Que properly prepared by cooks who do not make excuses for not having good sauce!
Something most people don’t know about you: The level of respect and admiration that I have for past and current Trustees of Wabash is something that most people do not know about me. The willingness of individuals who comprise the Board of Trustees at Wabash to reach back and serve an institution and in the process over look differences to allow students, who they do not personally know, may not like and often may not agree with the educational opportunities that they had as young men, that truth be told their parents could not have provided them, is both remarkable and humbling.