J. Herman Blake, African American Studies program director, has announced he will end his career in higher education at the end of the semester, after four decades of providing experience and direction for students.

Blake, professor of educational leadership and policy studies, said he will retire from his position on June 30, 2005.

“The thing that I’ve missed most in my career is that I have not been able to maintain my research in a consistent and sustained manner, so I intend to completely sever myself from all teaching and all the things I love and turn to the other love, which is research and writing,” Blake said. “I like the leadership roles I’ve played, I love the teaching I’ve done, I enjoy students to a great degree, so I will miss them, but to be honest with you, I won’t regret leaving.”

Blake will be retiring after seven years at Iowa State. He was invited to join the faculty and provide administrative leadership in 1998.

Clarissa Taylor, junior in communication studies and coordinator of Circle of Trust — an academic success group for female black ISU students — said she will miss all of Blake’s statements like “A rising tide lifts all boats.”

The statement, Taylor said, means if one person in a community does well, then he or she will lift everyone else up with them.

She also said she will miss the knowledge he brought from his days working with Malcolm X and sharing his experiences. Taylor said the African American Studies program reinforces some of the values and traditions that her parents have taught her.

“It’s made me more active in communities of color as well as the Iowa State community,” she said.

The program was founded in 1990 after students and faculty members spent a decade trying to create a program that supported African American studies in higher education.

Blake said Richard Herrnstadt, a former professor of English, saw the need for such courses and took a sabbatical so he could prepare himself to teach them.

“Out of his vision and his early work, AAS got its start at Iowa State University,” Blake said. “When I first arrived [at Iowa State], my goals were to establish a high-quality, high-expectations academic unit focused on student achievement but also to begin to develop a research program that would reflect the values and the history of African American studies.”

Blake said it has been difficult to attain his goals for the program at Iowa State.

“Since I’ve been here, I’ve experienced three presidents, four provosts and five or six deans,” Blake said. “The top leadership has been so unstable that it has been hard to think about this at other levels.”

David Romero, senior in biology and coordinator of the A-Society, a student academic group, said Blake is a hard person to forget.

Blake’s leadership and experience have brought a lot to the program and to the whole university, Romero said.

“He makes students realize their own potential,” he said. “He makes them want to achieve excellence both academically and in their personal lives.”

Blake said he would like to see the African American Studies program have good, stable faculty who are not only good teachers, but superb scholars. He also would like the program to challenge students in a manner that leads to higher levels of academic achievement.

Finally, Blake said, he wants a program in which values are articulated though a program of outreach and service.