When Penny Proctor discovered she would graduate from Hillsdale College with a perfect GPA, campus erupted.
Until 1977, only men had graduated with a 4.0 GPA, a barrier Proctor broke as a double major.
Proctor heard the news from several faculty members as a student and was “shocked.”
While not certain of the reason it took so long for a female student to make the achievement, Proctor thought her generation was on the “cusp” of change.
“I think part of it has to do with, for a long time, women were not necessarily coming into college with an intense academic focus, particularly in the ’60s and ’70s,” Proctor said. “It didn’t matter what the grades were as long as they got the degree.”
After graduating Hillsdale, Proctor studied law at the University of Michigan where her graduating class included 23 women while the year prior had only eight.
Proctor attributes much of her accomplishment to her father who always pushed his four daughters to think outside traditional roles.
“If I said I was interested in being a nurse he would say, ‘Why don’t you think about being a doctor?’” Proctor said.
After hearing the Illinois state attorney speak at her high school, however, she realized her goal.
“He came on law day and made a great presentation,” Proctor said. “I said, ‘That’s what I want to do. I want to be a lawyer. I want to find ways to help people and help our country.’”
After graduating law school, wanting to work in labor and employment law, she got a job at a law firm in Ohio that defended hospitals on labor issues and, after a year, found a partner who focused on the medical field outside employment law with whom Proctor worked. After four years with the firm, she left to work at a non-profit hospital in health care law.
“I found the breadth of the issues to be intellectually stimulating,” Proctor said on her transition. “It was something different every day. I wanted to feel I made a positive contribution, and sometimes in law firms, you don’t feel that way.”
Making it there was not easy. While double majoring in English and Communication Arts, an interdisciplinary study akin to marketing, Proctor remained enthusiastically involved on campus, especially in the theater program.
Also active in Greek life, Proctor valued the consistent community in her busy schedule.
“Pi Beta Phi really spurred me on,” Proctor said. “As each semester went by, and I still had that 4.0, there’s a lot of pressure with that. My sisters were wonderful in helping me keep focused, keeping me positive, and helping me to diffuse that pressure when it got to be too bad.”
Proctor, as a student, normally up at 5 a.m. to study so her evenings would be free for other activities, averaging about five hours of sleep per night.
“I guess that’s how I relax. If I’m sitting with nothing to do, I’m bored, and I hate being bored,” Proctor told The Collegian her senior year in the March 10, 1977 issue.
Proctor’s sorority sisters remember her for her genuine character and talent.
“Penny was everywhere,” Coordinator of Alumni Events and Programs Nanette Laser said. “Very accomplished in everything she did. I always admired her. She was so available, smart, talented, and good to everyone.”
Director of Career Services Joanna Wiseley, also a Pi Phi with Proctor, recounted times when Proctor would sing and play piano as sorority song leader and perform in Tower Players productions.
“Even though she was earning a four point, she always had time for her sisters,” Wiseley said. “Now she gives back to Hillsdale by donating her time to Pi Beta Phi.”
After retiring in 2011, Proctor helped plan the 125th anniversary of the Michigan Alpha Chapter of Pi Phi in 2012, even making a keynote speech on its history.
Since Proctor graduated, much at Hillsdale has changed. This includes that some time in the ’80s, the college altered its grading scale so that an A- is worth 3.7 in one’s GPA, according to registrar Douglas McArthur, which means Proctor, on today’s system, would not have been a 4.0.
“It’s not completely apples to apples,” McArthur said. “Today, a four point means no A-‘s.”
Nonetheless, Proctor’s achievement demonstrates overpowering the odds and what a Hillsdale education can do.
“I personally did not experience this, but some professors may have been harder on women than on men,” Proctor said. “There was change in the view of women, and this was not just at Hillsdale. At the time I was graduating, women began coming to college with ambition for other things.”