A new degree of pride
A story 60 years in the making ended recently with a peculiar occurrence at the College of LAS winter convocation in December: The final bachelor’s degree recipient to cross the stage was bestowed with a bachelor’s degree in zoology, which hadn’t happened since the 1970s when the Department of Zoology was renamed and virtually forgotten.
Thus ended a quirky side note in the career of Alan Harris, who at 79 serves as vice chair of academic affairs at the Department of Internal Medicine at Rush University Medical College. He’s an accomplished infectious disease doctor with a long list of leadership posts on his resume, but in fact he never earned a bachelor’s degree.
One of his family’s oldest jokes, Harris noted wryly, is that he’s the only doctor who’s also a college drop-out. The joke only grew as the years passed, as his wife, Judy (BA, ’68, teaching of French), and sons Seth (BS, ’94 architectural studies; master’s of architecture, ’96; MS, ’96, finance; MBA, ’97), Kevin BS, ’96 finance), Marshall (BS, journalism, ’98), and Charles (BS, ’10, philosophy), and Seth’s wife Meredith (BS, ’97, leisure studies), whom Seth met at U of I, count nine degrees from U of I amongst them. Two of Alan’s brothers, a sister-in-law, two nieces, and a nephew are also U of I alumni.
The dropout label, it turns out, is rather unfair, but it’s true that Harris has worked his entire career without a bachelor’s degree. It’s due to circumstances that are no longer possible; the Association of American Medical Colleges requires that all medical students have at least a bachelor’s degree. In the 1960s, however, when Harris attended the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, medical schools didn’t require it.
That’s why in 1965, after three years at U of I, Harris applied and was accepted to the University of Illinois College of Medicine. There was an arrangement between the U of I and the U of I College of Medicine where first-year medical students could use their medical school credits to complete their bachelor’s degree.
But Harris was missing some required undergraduate coursework—or so he thought—and while he earned his medical degree in 1969, he never received his bachelor’s degree.
“For the first few years after I got my medical degree I thought, ‘Maybe I’ll do that… it would be nice,” Harris said, of his bachelor’s degree. “And then life goes on.”
Harris was in his mid-70s before he revisited the idea seriously. He was at a medical school reunion in 2019 when he mentioned to a friend and former classmate that he’d never gotten his bachelor’s degree. It turned out that his friend had a similar experience—but with entirely different outcome.
“He looked at me and said, ‘Well, I appealed it in 1976 and they gave me mine,’” Harris said. “I said, ‘You gotta be kidding me.’”
Finally, in 2024, Harris wrote to the Office of the Dean in the College of LAS to ask for assistance ending, as he put it, decades of teasing by his family. Within a few months the LAS Student Academic Affairs Office, along with the Office of the Registrar, determined that in fact Harris had the credits necessary to have his bachelor’s degree certified.
The wrinkle? While Harris had been a mathematics major, he qualified for a bachelor’s degree in zoology. Jeanine Meyer, an admissions and records officer who handled the matter with executive assistant dean Bob Steltman, said it was a rare case.
Harris was nevertheless thrilled to learn that he’d be getting an undergraduate degree. Venetria K. Patton, the Harry E. Preble Dean of the College of LAS, invited Harris to the ceremony, and he readily agreed. His wife, Judy, and sons Seth, Kevin, and Marshall, came to campus for the ceremony (Charlie couldn’t attend). During convocation weekend they met at Rose Bowl Tavern, a local establishment co-owned by Harris’s youngest son, Charlie. Dean Patton and others from the college showed up to mark the special occasion.
“This was so fun and nice and all the people I've met have been so sweet and nice and congratulatory and inclusive,” Harris said. “It was just this fun, special, family moment.”
While Harris received special recognition for his degree, he said that he was proud of all of his fellow graduates. He mused that he could possibly be the U of I’s last zoology grad, but he hesitated to say for certain.
You never know, after all, how long someone might wait to cross that stage.
