This will be the first academic year without Bill Short, director of St. Lawrence University’s Higher Education Opportunity Program. HEOP is a program that gives students from all cultural backgrounds, who face financial burdens but show potential for academic success, the chance to pursue higher education. He’s been working at SLU for about 28 years. He had his retirement party on Jan. 17 in Downtown Manhattan, at Bella Union, which was intended to last from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
Dan Sullivan was the president of HEOP in 1988, after whom the Student Center is named. Sullivan left an impression on Short: Short launched part of his career in St. Lawrence County’s Bootsy District. It was a “consortium of shared school and services… like library services and special education” that “every school needs but can’t afford on their own, working with adults in equivalent degrees and trade skills,” as Short described this initiative aimed to help individuals who never had the opportunity to gain early access to higher education achieve career success.
Short said it was a “program innovation, helping people come up with marketable skills similar in philosophy to HEOP, where you give people an education and a chance to make something of their lives, and they do it. People really need an opportunity.”
At the time, in 1988, there was a scarcity of the HEOP program being defunded. Sullivan expressed that “whether the state is a part of this or not, St. Lawerence will always do this because this is the right thing.” Short noted how his statement was a reassurance of where he would soon emerge himself at SLU. As he responded, “If that’s your answer, I’m your guy!”
Short recalled not only the importance of the job and how he got it, but also the program’s influential impact on his students. One is Travis Prue, who “complained to me throughout his freshman year how much he hated to read and write, and he stuck with it, and with practice, everything gets better” Short described. “He got a master’s in public policy, worked as a New York state senator, worked his last job before his current as an associate Chancler for marketing and communication of the entire SUNY system and now, he’s the president of the university. I just love to laugh with him and say remember when you said you loved to read and write what do you do for a living now?”
He also recalled a visit to a friend who’s a school counselor, who had students who expressed a lack of continued academic effort after graduating from high school. He and this student shared a connection for the desire for an opportunity. He offered to work on applying to affordable colleges, and one turned out to be St. Lawrence. She “served as a mentor in our summer program, stayed and got a master’s in counseling and human development, working temporarily as assistant director at C-STEP and McNair, then went to law school,” Short said. She now works as an immigrant lawyer. Short continued by saying “She and her husband lived in Kenya, Italy then Malta, all over the world”.
As Short emphasized, these stories aren’t just from people he remembers from familiarity, but from those who created an empowering, enduring lifestyle for themselves. He noted that he doesn’t “take credit for anyone’s success. I’m good at creating conditions, but it’s up to you.”
After retirement, Short plans to remain involved in “college access work,” finishing household tasks by “writing,” and looking forward to his 90-miler training in July 2026 as an ultra-marathon kayak racer. His favorite thing is being “able to facilitate people in creating these phenomenal success stories.” It seems that when you can’t count on yourself their people like Short who will do it for you. It’s only a matter of time before you start believing in yourself.
Yet the question remains: will HEOP’s original advising space, Fox Hall, open soon, and what can students within the program expect under new leadership next school year? “We love you, Bill,” notes current HEOP students here on campus.