PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Girard College has named Chicago educator F. Christopher Goins as its next president.
The Board of Directors of City Trusts, which operates the 174-year-old boarding school, announced the move Monday after a national search.
Girard College, established with money from the will of banker Stephen Girard, provides free college-prep education to poor children from single-parent families.
Goins, 44, most recently was the chief equity officer at the nonprofit Thrive Chicago, where he guided the My Brother’s Keeper Alliance for the Obama Foundation.
“What we charted out to do in Chicago is to create an entire ecosystem that wraps its arms around our young people, and oftentimes those are the young people that are forgotten,” he told KYW Newsradio. Goins also founded Butler College Prep, a charter high school in Chicago.
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“My goal is to create the same type of ecosystem for the students at Girard – that we are a model for what’s possible and what’s necessary.”
300 students from first to 12th grade are enrolled at Girard College. Goins said he’s already looking at ways to increase Girard’s reach.
“We are thinking about and exploring plans around how to expand in pre-K and kindergarten. They would not be residential, but there’s a need there,” he said.
“I do believe that Girard is well equipped, and will be well equipped within the next couple of years to grow our student enrollment.”
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He also wants to raise the profile of Girard College. He said he hadn’t heard of the school until a recruiter mentioned the open president’s job last fall.
Goins said even Philadelphians he talked with were unfamiliar with the school’s mission.
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“Some people thought it was a nursing school.,” he said. “Some people thought it was a historically Black college or university. They didn’t know [Girard is] serving students in grades first through 12.”
Goins went to high school in Greensboro, N.C. and he has worked for the last decade in Chicago. But some of his heart was already in Philly.
“My favorite football team was the Philadelphia Eagles because of Randall Cunningham,” he told KYW Newsradio.
“I had the Starter jacket, and my favorite color was green. And I knew nothing really about Philadelphia other than Randall Cunningham.”
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Goins replaces Heather Deneen Wathington, who left last year to lead iMentor, a mentoring organization. James Turner has been serving as interim president.
Goins takes over as president July 1.
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