In 1968, Margaret Lehner was searching for a job in education. She had several job offers to teach high school English in her home city of Chicago, but an ad caught her eye for a position at a new community college being constructed in a suburb called Palos Hills.
“[Palos] was like the end of the world here,” she said.
She drove to the campus for an interview. But when she got to the address she had been given, there was nothing there. Only empty roads, a sod farm, and cornfields extending far into the horizon. She began to worry she would be late to her interview.
But suddenly, she said, “I see this man standing on the corner near one of the houses on 188th Avenue, and he’s waving his arms at me.”
So she pulled over and rolled down her window.
Margaret Lehner interviewed for a job at Moraine Valley Community College in a temporary quonset hut in 1968, one year after the college’s founding.
Nearly 55 years later, after playing an integral role in the development of the college, she is retiring this fall from her position as vice president of Institutional Advancement and executive assistant to the president. Taking over her role as of Monday is Kiana Battle, dean of liberal arts.
In announcing Lehner’s retirement, President Pamela Haney referred to Lehner’s “five decades of exemplary service to the college,” saying that her “stellar record of service and leadership at Moraine Valley has been invaluable. We will miss her dearly.”
Over the years, Lehner has taught more than 11,000 students.
“I thought, ‘What a great opportunity to help build something literally from the ground up’” Lehner said. “I thought, ‘I’m going to take a chance and go with Moraine Valley,’ and that just made all the difference in my life.”
Lehner said she always knew Moraine had the potential to grow into something great: “We were a pretty great group of people, we had great ideas, we were all energetic, and we all wanted to make this a success.”
Lehner began at Moraine Valley as an instructor of communications and literature and started teaching in the quonset huts and warehouse prior to the construction of the first campus buildings.
“We had fruit flies in our coffee because they would escape from the lab,” she said. “And then the sulfur smell from the chemistry lab because everything was open back then.”
As a career woman in education in the 1960s, Lehner faced certain challenges.
“When I first started there was only one female administrator here at the college,” Lehner said. That administrator worked in the nursing department.
“There were no male nurses,” she said. “Believe me, if there was a male, there would have been a male in that position.”
One of Lehner’s friends in the early days of the school became pregnant and left for maternity leave. ”When she came back to teach, her dean said, ‘Oh, we’ll let you back part-time,’” she said.
Her friend took this issue to the vice president of academic affairs at the time, who backed her up. “That decision was a big decision that was made that saved all the female faculty at the time who were twenty-four-something, getting married, and having babies, from giving up their careers.”
Lehner was also personally impacted by these struggles, especially when she asked the executive assistant to write her a letter of recommendation for her doctoral program at Northern Illinois University.
“I asked him if he would write a letter of recommendation, and he did. My professor at Northern said ‘I’m going to share this with you because I think you need to know this,’” she said.
“The letter said I was very capable but I would never make it as an administrator. I thought, ‘What a horrible thing to put in a letter.’”
“It was also a milestone for the college because I was the first female vice president, so I broke that glass ceiling,”
Margaret Lehner
Despite everything Lehner faced as she built her career, she didn’t let it stop her.
In 1984, she was offered a job as the executive dean of liberal arts. “It was a tough decision for me to make to leave the classroom and to go into administration,” she said.
Lehner has always held a deep appreciation for her students: “Everything I do here for the college is for the students. But I thought new opportunity, new challenges, so I’m going to give it a go.”
In 1987, Lehner shaped college history once more and became vice president of academic affairs.
“That was a milestone for me and it was also a milestone for the college because I was the first female vice president, so I broke that glass ceiling,” she said.
In the late 1980s, Lehner became head of an initiative to bring a cultural center to campus in an attempt to bring arts and culture to the suburbs.
“The only culture we had back then was the Sabre room, which was on 95th street, but we didn’t have theaters that were really around here,” she said.
This project evolved into The Fine and Performing Arts Center, which she says was a highlight of her career.
After tireless work with the Moraine Valley Foundation and several sponsors and community leaders, the FPAC opened its doors in January of 1994. “That was my baby,” she said.
Lehner has always played pivotal roles in pushing the college forward.
“We were on electric typewriters when we started,” she said.
But in an attempt to stay with the times, Lehner has always pushed for new technology across campus. She helped set up the first computer training lab for faculty, and in 1982, Lehner helped set up the first Apple 2E lab. “And it went like wildfire,” she said.
In 2011, Lehner started a committee for the Agree to Degree program in an attempt to increase the graduation and retention rates at the school.
“One of the things I have to say about working here at Moraine Valley: There has not been a day since I got here that I have woken up in the morning and not wanted to be here.”
Lehner describes herself as a “servant leader.”
“I don’t ask anyone to do anything I’m not willing to do, which means picking up a piece of paper if I see it on the floor,” she said, laughing.
“I thought, ‘I’m going to take a chance and go with Moraine Valley,’ and that just made all the difference in my life.”
Margaret Lehner
As Lehner looks back at her nearly 55 years at Moraine Valley, she feels a great deal of pride.
“We pushed the envelope, and I’m very proud of what our generation did, especially the women in it,” she said. “We were part of that women’s movement.”
But everything comes back to Lehner’s passion and love for the students.
“We have single mothers, we have people with extraordinary financial challenges, I’ve had students who have lived in their cars, I’ve seen it all,” she said. “And yet, they persist and they reach their goals. I have seen such heroism in pursuing goals not only for themselves but for their families.”
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