Harrow Valley Community College opened in 1968 in two borrowed classrooms above the Harrow fire hall. Today about 6,200 students take credit and non-credit classes on the Valley Ridge Road campus and online.
The college grew up around three things the valley already had: the old Hawthorne library, a stand of enormous oaks at the north edge of campus that everyone calls the Old Grove, and a stubborn local habit of asking why. Students still read by green-shaded lamps in the Lantern Room, the bell in Kestrel Hall still rings the hour (a few minutes late), and every fall the Philological Society holds its candlelit reading of a poem written in a language that one of its members invented.
Traditions
- The First Lamp. On the first night of the fall term, the newest student lights the first lamp in the Lantern Room.
- Grove Day. Each spring, Botany students spend a full day in the Old Grove, in silence, listening. Results vary.
- Elevenses. The Green Door Tea Room serves a second breakfast at exactly 11:00. Nobody remembers why. Nobody objects.
- The Unfinished Map. Cartography students add one detail each year to the great map in Kestrel Hall. A corner of it is still marked unknown.
- Founded
- 1968
- Students
- About 6,200
- Programs
- More than 50 degrees and certificates
- Colors
- Valley Green and Harvest Gold
- Mascot
- Harlow the Hawk
- Motto
- Surgite cum Valle (Rise with the Valley)
Our mascot
