East Allen University

East Allen County Schools, 6501 Wayne Trace, Fort Wayne; grades nine through twelve; early college high school opened August 2012 in the former Paul Harding High School building

Origins: East Allen University exists because Paul Harding High School closed. On September 21, 2010, Superintendent Karyle Green presented a redesign plan to cut costs and answer falling enrollment. The board approved it on October 5, 2010, by six votes to one. Harding and seven elementary schools would close at the end of the 2010 to 2011 school year, and Harding pupils who had not graduated would be spread among Woodlan, Leo, Heritage and New Haven. Harding closed on June 10, 2011, in its fifth year on state academic probation. For one year the building held seventh and eighth graders and took remodeling. What reopened in August 2012 was split in two: Paul Harding Junior High School for grades seven and eight, and East Allen University for grades nine through twelve.

The Name: It is not a university. The name describes the work. East Allen University is an early college high school in full partnership with Vincennes University, endorsed as an early college since 2015. A pupil works toward at least a Core 40 diploma and can earn sixty or more Vincennes credits and an associate degree in the same four years, at no cost for the college credit, with credits that transfer to public universities in Indiana. Green first planted the idea. Principal Doug Hicks, in post since the opening, sold it to board, teachers and families.

The Building: The school stands on the southeast side of Fort Wayne, in a building first constructed in 1973 for Paul Harding High School, named for the first superintendent of East Allen County Schools. The two schools still share the address and a working staff: assistant principal, instructional coach, art teacher, receptionist, registrar, nurse, media specialist and school resource officer all serve both. In 2026 the campus is under construction again, with two story additions for each school, a renovation of the north half and demolition planned for the south half.

How It Works: Admission comes at the start, not midway. Families attend a meeting in the winter and an interview in the spring, and in practice only ninth graders, with a few tenth graders, are admitted. Vincennes keeps its own people in the building: a full time assistant dean, a coordinator and tutors, at no cost to the district. Pupils study on a block schedule unlike the other East Allen high schools. The pathways are health, business and liberal arts, and the stated principles are relationships, relevance and rigor.

Growth: Enrollment shows a school filling one cohort at a time: 113 pupils in 2013, 202 in 2014, 258 in 2015 and 319 in 2016, when the first class graduated. It then held between 308 and 336 a year before easing to 291 in 2024 to 2025. Pupils arrive from all five East Allen attendance areas and from outside the district, the largest single group in 2020 coming from Harding Junior High in the same building.

The Pupils: This school was placed, on purpose, where need was greatest, in one of the poorest parts of the city, where refugee families were settling. In 2017 one pupil in five was a Burmese refugee, and in 2020 to 2021 a third were English learners. By 2024 to 2025 Asian pupils were the largest group, 156 of 291, and 210 qualified for free or reduced price lunch.

The Record: For its first senior class in 2016, eighty five percent of graduates earned sixty or more Vincennes credit hours. For the fifth class, in 2020, eighty nine percent earned the associate degree outright. The state managed to call the school an F before it had graduated anyone, a grade the district had nullified because the formula gave a three year old school no graduation credit at all. The next year brought an A grade and a Four Star School honor in February 2018. That spring two women from the first class, Giselle Miller and McKenzie Suggs, took bachelor degrees at Indiana Tech, less than six years after starting high school, one of them debt free.

Today: In 2026 East Allen University remains one of five East Allen high schools, small by design and still led by Doug Hicks, with construction reshaping the old Harding campus around it. In September 2023 the state gave it the Excellence in Community Collaboration Award. Families still choose it in an interview room in the spring, betting four years of hard classes against a degree in hand at eighteen.

Sources:

1. East Allen University, School Improvement Plan 2020 to 2021, September 16, 2020: the August 2012 opening, partnership, shared staff and first classes.
2. East Allen County Schools, board minutes, bid notices and planning schedule, 2023 to 2026: campus construction and Principal Doug Hicks.
3. The Journal Gazette, Karen Francisco, June 3, 2018: the closure debate, nullified F grade, Four Star honor and first graduates.
4. National Center for Education Statistics, East Allen University (180285002532): 291 students in 2024 to 2025.
5. Public School Review, NCES and Indiana Department of Education data: enrollment from 113 in 2013 to 291 in 2025.
6. Indiana Public Broadcasting and NPR, March 25, 2017: Burmese refugee pupils and the Harding building.
7. Vincennes University, budget request: East Allen University as a 2012 to 2013 early college site.