Grace Van Wert

Grace Van Wert was a trailblazer in public school administration who never lost her enthusiasm for the value of education for all people. She served the greater Lansing community with unselfish devotion. A native of Michigan’s Hillsdale County, she attended Hillsdale College as a freshman and later received her bachelor’s degree from Eastern Michigan University. Sher earned her Master’s Degree at Michigan State University with post-graduate work at Boston and Columbia Universities.

Grace enjoyed a distinguished teaching career in the Lansing School District and became the principal of the Grand River and Barnes Avenue schools. At the end of World War II, she was among 110 U.S. teachers and administrators who helped establish 40 schools in the American Occupied Zone of Germany for the children of the U.S. occupation forces.

Before retiring from the Lansing Public Schools in 1972, Grace held the position of Director of Elementary Education and became one of few women to have achieved such high administrative status at that time.

In 1992 she established the Grace Van Wert Endowed Scholarship for residents of the LCC district who are enrolled as full-time students in transfer programs that lead to bachelor’s degrees.