By Jill Laster

Ann M. Fields, the new president of William Penn University, longed to attend college her entire adult life, but it wasn't until 1987, as she sat in her brother's room awaiting his funeral, that she finally decided to go.

Ms. Fields, then about 40 and a farmer, noticed a quotation by Theodore Roosevelt on the wall: "Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat."

"I was suffering in the gray twilight," Ms. Fields said, "and I decided to do the mighty thing."

Not only did Ms. Fields, now 61, get a bachelor's degree—she earned master's and doctoral degrees too. Now, after about a decade as a college instructor and administrator, she has become the first woman to lead William Penn, a Quaker institution in Oskaloosa, Iowa.

Ms. Fields took up farming in the late 1960s, shortly after graduating from high school, along with her first husband.

Their family farm had 2,000 hogs, 100 cattle, and, by the late 70s, about 1,500 acres of corn and soybeans. Ms. Fields worked full time on the farm during good years and took bookkeeping jobs in years the farm didn't do well.

By the mid-1980s, when a farming crisis gripped the Midwest, every year was a bad one. The family had to file for bankruptcy and sell the farm. Her husband was driving trucks to earn money, and their daughter and son had gone off to college.

For Ms. Fields, the time was right to make a change.

She enrolled at Iowa State University as a full-time student and majored in agricultural business, living in a trailer and working full time. Her daughter and son were enrolled there, too.

"I had been telling her things were so hard, and I could only make B's, but she came and got A's every semester and made the dean's list," her daughter, Jamie Qureshi, said. "So she blew my cover."

Ms. Fields planned to find a job, maybe selling seed, after she graduated. But she earned a Truman Scholarship in 1990, which paid for her senior year and two years of master's studies. Before earning a master's in agricultural economics in 1994, she spent about a year in Ukraine managing the planting of 150,000 acres of corn.

"It was mind-boggling," Ms. Fields said. "I had never been out of the U.S. before that, and here I am halfway across the world developing a $40-million joint venture."

Ms. Fields returned to Iowa State to finish her master's and then was hired to direct an effort to improve agricultural education in Iowa, which involved talking to many community groups.

Gerald E. Klonglan, her supervisor then, said Ms. Fields often talked about how her mother taught her to connect with people and help them. It showed, Mr. Klonglan said. "She had an amazing talent in community groups, student groups, for bringing out ideas."

Ms. Fields started working at William Penn in 2001, the same year she received her Ph.D. in educational leadership and policy studies from Iowa State. She first taught courses in business, becoming director of learning and retention several years later. She moved through the administrative ranks and became the university's interim president in July 2009. Her role as president was made permanent in February.

Joe Crookham, chairman of the university's Board of Trustees, said that about five years ago, he chose Ms. Fields to be on a board committee for William Penn's College for Working Adults because he admired her teaching. Within two or three meetings, he said, he already knew he wanted her to be the institution's president someday.

"She just doesn't get rattled," said Mr. Crookham. "She's very bright, she's a phenomenal listener, and she has strong skills at developing five- and 10-year visions."

Ms. Fields said one of her biggest goals as president is to make sure the university experience is primarily student-driven, versus being geared toward faculty or staff needs. She also wants to incorporate more technology into education "to prepare our students to better serve the future."

But her quarters near campus aren't so high tech. Ms. Fields doesn't live in the president's house; instead, she and her second husband live on a 60-acre organic farm about a 30-minute drive from the university, which they run with help from hired laborers.

She admits hers is an unusual path to becoming a university president; through it all, though, she's stuck to an adage.

"Bloom where you are planted," she said. "I just took advantage of whatever came my way."