Dr. Harry A. Becker, First President of Norwalk Community College, Archives To Be Housed at Norwalk Community College, Norwalk, Connecticut

On April 5, 2006, a brief ceremony was held at NCC, dedicating a permanent home for Dr. Harry A. Becker's Archives in the Norwalk Community College Library. Dr. Becker was the first President of NCC, from l961-l966. Conjointly, he was also Superintendent of Schools in Norwalk for seventeen years, retiring in l970.

Dr. Becker took a dream and made it a reality-the first community college in the state of Connecticut. For the first few years, NCC was housed in the public high school in Norwalk. Now, 12,000 students, full and part-time, attend a beautiful campus in Norwalk that houses Norwalk Community College. Check the website at http://www.nctc.commnet.edu/default.asp

Dr. Becker, (1912-1999) a graduate of Yale University, with a Ph.D. in Psychology, was a nationally renowned educator. His achievements included starting many of the individual colleges at the University of Bridgeport, where he was the Dean of Adminisitration and Education, developing techniques to help School Boards across the country negotiate more successfully, and bringing to Norwalk the Norwalk Plan.

The Norwalk Plan was an innovative educational project in the 1960's that included a large grant from the Ford Foundation for Team Teaching and other progressive educational strategies such as creative thinking and split-shift teaching. A major part of the philosophy of this Plan was to introduce "innovations as soon as possible." Norwalk employed "educational practices of proven worth but not yet common among American school systems."

Norwalk Community College from the time it opened its doors in l961, brought the possibility of a college education home to every citizen in that part of Connecticut who wished to pursue vocational or educational pursuits beyond high school. The educationally discouraged person who needed another chance,, the financially limited, the older citizen looking to re-train or develop an avocation, the young mother, they all came. Thousands of students have gone on to four year colleges and graduate schools because NCC exists. Many other thousands have found the dignity of success.

The Dr. Harry A. Becker Archives will be permanently housed in the Norwalk Community Library and are available upon request.

Dr. Harry A. Becker was the father of Dr. Barbara Becker Holstein, Positive Psychologist. Dr. Barbara, in private practice since 1981 in New Jersey, has taken her vision of psychological well-being and how to achieve a life of meaning and joy to the public and other clinicians for many years. Her Enchanted Self concepts derive from research she did with women and from her private practice experiences. To learn more about the concepts of The Enchanted Self, visit her web site http://www.enchantedself.com where you can read articles, get information on her tele-classes, Internet chats and television appearances or sign up for her popular e-newsletter.

For more information contact Dr. Holstein directly at encself@aol.com or 1-877-B-JOYFUL.