‘Community’ creator did his homework

Airing tonight at 9:30 on NBC (Channel 7), “Community’’ was inspired in part by Harmon’s experiences at Glendale Community College when he was in his early 30s. The series ensemble includes Joel McHale, host of “The Soup,’’ and comedic elder statesman Chevy Chase, as two members of a large and comically diverse Spanish study group.

“I went to this school to try to keep my relationship with my girlfriend alive at the time,’’ Harmon, the series executive producer, told reporters here recently. “We took Spanish together thinking, ‘Let’s force each other to work on something that isn’t sex.’ ’’

The relationship didn’t survive, but the effect of taking classes with people from different walks of life did.

“I took biology. I took psychology. And I ended up in these study groups because the kids would see that I was throwing off the grade curve, and they wanted to study with me,’’ said Harmon, who previously worked on “The Sarah Silverman Program’’ and cofounded the comedy website Channel 101. “I’m a very standoffish, agoraphobic kind of guy and I didn’t really want to, but I was socially paralyzed into saying yes.

“But then, this thing happened while I was studying with them,’’ he added, “where I got so excited when they understood cellular mitosis. All of a sudden, we were just high-fiving each other, and we were this family.’’

How deeply that sense struck Harmon, surprised him. “It just felt incredibly subversive to me, because these were people who literally lived in my community and yet we were never going to have met each other’’ without community college, he explained.

Landing Chase for the role of eccentric rich guy Pierce, who comes to the fictional Greendale Community College in order to fraternize with real people, was a dream for Harmon. “I quite literally moved from Milwaukee to Los Angeles for the express purpose of impressing my parents who were focused on this box in the ’70s that [Chevy Chase] was the king of,’’ he said.

Given how fondly he feels about his own experience, Harmon said “Community’’ does not intend to mock the educational standards of community colleges. In fact, he considers Greendale to be a character in and of itself.

“I continually compare it to Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree,’’ he explained. “Its ambition exceeds its grasp. And therefore, it is heroic.’’

Sarah Rodman can be reached at srodman@globe.com.