Dr. J. Michael Harpe has worked in every level in education in the 20+ years of his professional career.  Dr. Harpe is known to be a visionary, results-focused, and proactive academic professional with multifaceted experience fulfilling a number of diversified roles in the higher education environment and leading them to educational excellence. He is a dynamic leader with a penchant for capital campaigns, policy development, and site utilization. In his career, he has excelled at building solid networks of support to achieve numerous goals focused on the continuous improvement of educational services. 

Currently, he is a Consultant with the Capitol Hill Consulting Group in Washington, District of Columbia  and President of the JMH, Group, LLC – a higher education consulting firm.   He has extensive experience as a senior level administrator in higher education having formally served as the Vice President for Student Affairs at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore and as the Vice President for Student Affairs and Leadership Development at Cheney University of Pennsylvania.  Additionally, Dr. Harpe has had faculty appointments at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Wilmington University in New Castle, Delaware and Springfield College-Wilmington, Delaware campus. In August 2009, Dr. Harpe was selected as the first recipient of the Joseph and Lynne Horning Faculty Fellowship at Mount Saint Mary’s University, America’s second oldest Catholic university where he was an appointed faculty member.  

Dr. Harpe has had a myriad of professional administrative appointments in two and four-year colleges and universities over his career.  Prior to his faculty appointment at Mount Saint Mary’s University, he worked with the North Carolina TEACH & North Carolina Model Teacher Consortium at Fayetteville State University.  He has over a decade of administrative experience at the two-year community level having been appointed as the Dean of Student Services at Sampson Community College in Clinton, North Carolina and as an Associate Dean of Enrollment Management at Forsyth Technical Community College.  At the time of this appointment at FTCC, Dr. Harpe was the youngest sitting dean in the North Carolina Community College System.

He received his Bachelor of Arts in English/Media Journalism and his Masters of Arts in Counselor Education with a minor in Educational Psychology from North Carolina Central University and his Ed.D. in Educational Leadership/Higher Education from Fayetteville State University. Currently, he is a candidate for a Masters of Business Administration at Rutgers University. He also has continued his studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Johns Hopkins University and Wilmington University. Due to his administrative and professional acumen, he was nominated and was selected to participate in American Association of State College and Universities (AASCU) Millennium Leadership Institute for Senior Administrative Leadership for prospective aspirants for college or university presidential appointments.  Recently, he was selected to participate in the prestigious Harvard University Institute for Educational Management.

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Dr. Harpe has written and published articles in numerous professional journals and books as well as reviewed manuscripts for several professional academic publications. He is a frequent keynote speaker at conferences, workshops and symposiums and serves as an educational consultant to businesses in the public and private sector.  He is a member of numerous non-profit boards and organizations and is a Life Member of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc. He is married to Tracy A. Harpe and is the father of two sons- Jaedon (21), Jonathan (19).