Harold B. Frye, Ed.D.

The 2005 Alumni Service Award Winner, Harold Frye, Ed.D., is emblematic of UMKC’s School of Education, from which he received a bachelor’s degree, a master’s degree, and an educational specialist degree before completing his doctorate in education at Kansas University.  Both he and the School are quiet, diligent servants who love to collaborate and serve the needs of youth inside and outside the classroom walls.

When Frye came to UMKC in 1964, fresh from two years at Kansas City, Kansas Community College, he knew he wanted to be a teacher. Teaching was all about service – and service is what Frye is all about.

Frye was raised simply in the Quindaro neighborhood of Kansas City, Kan.  His father was a lifelong employee of a large pharmaceutical company. His mother unquestionably influenced Frye with early examples of community service; she provided hot lunches for a dime to several children she took into her home at midday.  Together, his parents built a strong foundation for Frye, his brother and two sisters.  In 1955, they also built a new house in Kansas City, Kan. for $15,000.  Frye kept his roots in Wyandotte County for the next 30 years. 

While strongly rooted in the community of his youth and his current Overland Park community in Johnson County, Kan., Frye nonetheless has had an expansive reach into the lives of thousands of people – both in his roles as educator/educational leader and humanitarian.

Currently at Baker University where he holds titles as associate professor and chair of the graduate education programs, Frye has a special place in his heart for UMKC, where he spent more than a decade earning three degrees.  At UMKC, he was the director of the Kansas City Professional Development Schools Collaborative (Goals 2000), a $1.2 million project that created a partnership between the School of Education and several area school districts to foster greater communication about issues of teacher preparation. He was instrumental in starting the School of Education’s subsequent grant, Preparing Tomorrow’s Teachers to Use Technology, to increase the use of technology in classrooms.  He is a past president of the School of Education Alumni Assn., vice president of the UMKC Alumni Assn., and served as a member of both the Teacher Education Coordinating Council and the School of Education Scholarship Committee. He also was an influential leader in organizing and planning the School of Education’s new Institute for Urban Education, which begins this fall with eleven students who pledge to return to area urban schools to teach after receiving their degrees.  A person once joked that Frye spent so much volunteer time at the School of Education, administrators should provide him an office or at least a permanent parking pass.

Not one to limit himself to a couple of endeavors, Frye enjoys time contributing to students in a multitude of ways – teaching classes in the School of Education’s Continuing Education division, evaluating student portfolios and giving them guidance on how to conduct a successful interview for that first teaching job; and handling innumerable tasks others might regard as menial at festivals, rallies, picnics, commencements and the Court Warming Ball.

Frye’s role as an educator extends well beyond the hallowed halls of UMKC.  In 1985, he was selected to receive the first Learning Exchange Fellowship, supported by the Hall Family Foundation. At the Learning Exchange, Frye personally trained more than 3,500 educators from four states; he specialized in coaching school principals on supervision methods; he wrote and published training materials; he initiated a metropolitan study group for high school restructuring; and he was a mentor to Urban Partners, a training program for new principals.

Frye also has served in leadership capacities in several school districts, including Kansas City, Kansas, and in Missouri, Center and Hickman Mills.  Always, his focus has been on helping to strengthen teachers and administrators and improving the quality of instruction in the classroom.  In Kansas City, Kansas Public Schools, Frye led the effort to reorganize junior high schools into middle schools, moved elementary schools toward activity-based learning models, piloted elementary education programs for gifted students and students with learning disorders and autism, and led training efforts for special education.

At Center, Frye chaired the district’s Technology Committee, wrote long-term technology plans and began technology projects in elementary and secondary music, language arts, science and math.  He developed district programs for early childhood, gifted and parent education, along with school-aged childcare. He received numerous awards for marketing programs he created, as well as K-12 integrated language arts instruction efforts.  Frye led teams of teachers in improving curriculum for all grade levels, coordinated the district’s state accreditation review, and authored the School Improvement Plan required by the state. 

In the Hickman Mills C-1 Schools, leadership training emerged as a focus of Frye’s activities.  He facilitated a New Teacher/Mentor Program for beginning teachers, led administrative staff in a leadership study and provided guidance to the district’s Professional Development Committee.  His efforts in fostering professional development led to the district being selected as one of 10 national finalists for the U.S. Department of Education Award for Professional Development; he even wrote the district’s application for the award!

At Baker University’s School of Professional and Graduate Studies, Frye has continued his focus on leadership and curriculum improvement. He co-authored the school’s first doctorate degree proposal for district leadership licensure (doctor of education in educational leadership).

The contributions Frye has made as an educator and educational leader are sufficient to fill many award dinners with praise for this man and many mantles with trophies, proclamations and certificates.  But looking through the prism of educational leadership cannot reveal the full panorama of a man who has made his livelihood being a humanitarian as well as a teaching professional.

Frye and his wife, Carol (in her 39^th year of teaching in the Shawnee Mission School District), have raised three sons (Christopher, 30, Andrew, 26, and Jeremy, 21), all teachers or studying to be teachers.  His two daughters-in-law also are teachers. An attentive father to his own boys, Frye also strived to set an example for other young men. An active leader in Boy Scouts, Frye led camping trips and helped them pitch their tents of ambition in life.  He coached older kids in the Suzuki Violin program. He is an elder in his church, Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church in Overland Park, and traveled on a mission trip to the border town of Nogales – a trip that found him bandaging the blistered feet of poor Mexicans eager to flee into the U.S. to find jobs and a better life for their families.  He slept with them on the dirt floors of huts with no running water and lived the primitive conditions that made up their every day lives.

Frye was a “Big Brother” for two years to a boy named Michael. A birthday celebration at the Frye house provided the first ever birthday cake for Michael.  So touched by the many voids in the youth’s life, Frye and his wife elected to be foster parents to Michael for six years, until he turned 16.  Although Frye has no contact with the boy (now a grown man), he feels fulfilled by the experience.  “Michael went on to become an Eagle Scout,” Frye noted proudly.  “You have to save people; that’s what it’s all about.”  

Frye confesses to having a difficult time saying “no” when someone asks for help, but still his choices of volunteer opportunities do fall into a pattern.  He favors opportunities that enhance the future outlook of children and schools, activities that are oriented to “action” and having a direct impact on the future lives of young people. He believes community service is something his generation and the young generation have in common.  “I am seeing the same thing in kids today as in the 1960s – and that is, a strong orientation to community service.  Teachers from my generation have a real strong connection to that and we are fostering it in a new generation.”

To Frye, leaving a legacy is critically important.  His parents left him a legacy in their guiding philosophy: “Always give back more than you get in life.”  Frye has fullfilled that pledge and left an indelible legacy of his own – one that has made the world a better place by giving opportunities and guidance to thousands of students, teachers and future teachers.

The University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC), one of four University of Missouri campuses, is a public university serving more than 14,000 undergraduate, graduate and professional students.  UMKC engages with the community and economy based on a three-part mission: visual and performing arts, health sciences, and urban affairs.

This information is available to people with speech or hearing impairments by calling Relay Missouri at (800) 735-2966 (TT) or (800) 735-2466 (voice).