Spotlight: Trustee Howard Gittis

Howard Gittis estimates that 40 percent of his Central High classmates enrolled at Temple. His exemplary SAT scores and a scholarship meant that he, too, could have gone anywhere.

He chose the University of Pennsylvania, earning degrees in economics and law.

But he admired Temple’s “importance in shaping a strong future for so many in my hometown.” So shortly before his Penn Law School friend Peter Liacouras became president, Gittis joined the Board of Trustees in 1980.

Already a leading Philadelphia legal figure at Wolf, Block, Schorr and Solis-Cohen, Gittis left Philadelphia in 1985 for an equally successful corporate career in New York City. He is now vice chairman and chief administrative officer of MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings, Inc., a diversified holding company with interests in Revlon, Panavision, Allied Security and Scientific Games, among others.

Through it all, he has served 24-and-counting consecutive years as a trustee, holding various leadership positions and becoming chairman in 2000.

Gittis attributes his commitment to Temple to his personal roots and the University’s role of “providing the benefits of higher education to people of all means,” he said. “I am a child of immigrants, the first in my family to go to college. A good education enabled me to make a fine living in life, and I believe that you have to give back. That’s why I have so much interest in helping Temple.”

As for Temple’s current transformation—enrolling record numbers of students who are more academically prepared than their predecessors and who come from a much broader geographic reach than the Temple of decades ago—Gittis described the moves as essential to the University’s future and consistent with its founding mission of providing access to a quality education.

Posing a series of rhetorical questions that he answered with a repeatedly resounding “absolutely!” Gittis asked: “Are we proud that average SATs are approaching 1,100? Are we proud of our current faculty and of the scholars we are attracting to Temple, who will further improve our teaching and research? Are we proud that minority enrollment and student diversity remain high compared to virtually any school in America? Are we proud that there will be nearly 7,000 students living on or around a vibrant campus?

“I mean, Temple has never seen anything like this!

“And if we take a kid who scores 780 on his SAT and put him into a class next to a student who scored 1250, that’s a difficult class to teach,” Gittis added. “We disappoint the aspiring student because he can’t keep up, and we disappoint the more accomplished student because he’s not being challenged.”

That’s why, Gittis said, Temple’s dual-admit programs with several community colleges are key. Those programs provide guaranteed admission to Temple as juniors for students who do well enough in two years at community college. And the students who come to Temple this way have retention and graduation rates that match or exceed students who enroll as freshmen.

“We can and we are attracting dedicated, bright students and at the same time we are fulfilling our mission to provide access to let people rise up in our society,” he said.

“In fact, if I could accomplish one thing, it would be that more Temple students be proud that they went to Temple,” he added. “Our reputation lags behind our accomplishments.”

In the end, the Central High kid who could have gone anywhere but didn’t choose Temple until the Board of Trustees called, received an honorary law degree in 1999. That was one way for Temple to “give back” to a leader whose commitment to the University, in the words of one observer, “is like a second full-time job. Not a day that goes by that he’s not doing some work for Temple.” — Mark Eyerly