Five Minutes with ACHE

I met the current president Dr. Maureen MacDonald, and through our discussions, we discovered very quickly that many of the issues we face in the United States are remarkably similar to those in Canada. This was very evident by the topics covered during the concurrent sessions:  funding,challenges in working within a traditional structure, professional development, maintaining CE units that can respond quickly to workforce trends, and for-profit institutions.  As a result of my conversations with Maureen, ACHE’s executive officers and board of directors will begin discussions on how we can work more closely together and collaborate on professional development initiatives via webinars.

I would also like to send out congratulations to ACHE for holding its first webinar!   Conducted by Dr. Kathy Snead, president of the Servicemembers Opportunity Colleges, the session titled “From Battlefield to the Classroom: Facilitating Military and Veteran Student Transitions to Campus” had over 70 registered participants.  Add that to the locations where several participants viewed the webinar from a single terminal, and our attendance climbed to over 100!  The webinar was held in fulfillment of an ACE/Walmart grant awarded to Park University one year ago.  A portion of the grant funds was earmarked to provide training webinars to adult continuing education professionals who serve military and veteran student populations.  If you missed the session, ACHE members can view the recording of the webinar and the slideshow used by our presenter in the ACHE Online Community.  To access the Community, please visit www.acheinc.org and log in to the Community with your ACHE credentials.  Then click on “Success for Veterans Webinar” on the top menu of the Community homepage.  A special thank you goes out to Regis Gilman at Western Carolina University who worked with the home office team to make this event happen.  Now that ACHE has “dipped its toe in the water,” so to speak, you’ll see more opportunities like this for professional development.    

During times of fiscal constraint, it is very easy to forget about our own professional development needs.  As professionals, it is essential that we keep on top of issues and trends in our industry.  The ACHE 2010 conference in Albuquerque promises to provide you with tangible work skills and current information that you can take back to your workplace and utilize to move your CE unit forward! 

An example of what you will learn at the conference can be found in our opening keynote session by Dr. Michael Offerman, Interim President of Capella University.  As you may know, there has been discussion in the press, notably on PBS's "Front Line," on for-profit institutions, but what do we really know about them?  If legislation were passed to limit the operations of for-profits, how would that legislation impact non-profits?  Dr. Offerman’s career spans the spectrum from a traditional setting to the for-profit sector, and he brings a unique perspective to the discussion.  During his presidency, Capella University grew from 2,000 students to 22,000 students and developed its award-winning learning outcomes assessment model.   He promises to provide conference attendees with provocative insights on for-profit institutions and how to meet the needs of adult learners. You can register now by visiting the ACHE 2010 website, and don’t forget to reserve your hotel room!

I close this Five Minutes with a wish for a fun and safe summer!

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Roxanne Gonzales
ACHE President, 2010

President Roxanne Gonzales is very interested to hear about success stories in continuing education, things that your units are doing to change the lives of adult students. In addition, we are always looking for articles on the following topics:

• Experiences in marketing a continuing education program
• A profile of a unique continuing education program at your institution
• Experiences as a professor in adult continuing education
• Article or book reviews

GAEA is a Georgia state association serving adult educators from all segments of the adult education profession including colleges and universities, corporations, governmental agencies and non-profit organizations. 

The award, which was presented to Bettandorff at the association’s annual meeting in June, recognizes extraordinary contributions on a long-term basis that have an extensive impact on adult/continuing education.

A GAEA member since 1998, Bettandorff has held several offices in the association and currently serves on the board of directors.

Bettandorff was named director of UGA’s Gwinnett Campus in February 2009.  She previously served as associate director for learning services at UGA’s Center for Continuing Education Conference Center and Hotel in Athens. As director of the Gwinnett Campus, she is responsible for day-to-day coordination of graduate and continuing education programs offered at the facility, located at 2530 Sever Road in Lawrenceville.

JCHE strives to support continuing higher education by serving as a forum for the reporting and exchange of information based on research, observations, and the experience relevant to the field. Issues are published in the winter, spring, and fall. JCHE is published by Routledge.

Manuscript submission guidelines are available online at or through ACHE’s website.

Potential authors should feel free to consult with JCHE editor James Broomall, University of Delaware. He can be reached at jbroom@udel.edu or (302) 831-2795.

Please share this announcement with colleagues and graduate students who may be interested in submitting manuscripts to JCHE. The Journal has published outstanding graduate student work in the past.

In dealing with repeated budget cuts, college and university presidents and provosts must give priority to preserving their “core business,” their academic programs and full-time students, and on maintaining or increasing revenues via appropriations, tuition, grants, and contracts. Whether their institutions are public or private, to preserve their funding streams, they need to demonstrate to their constituents—their governor, legislators, community leaders, alumni, and parents—that their institution provides high quality education and is an important strategic asset. They must show that cuts in institutional funding will harm the region, but that maintaining or increasing institutional support will enhance the area’s competitiveness and success, producing good jobs, stable businesses, and opportunities for graduates to remain in their home communities while elevating the quality of life for all.

Put yourself in the place of your provost or president. If it came down to significantly cutting or killing off your College of Arts & Sciences, Engineering, Business, Agriculture, Medicine, Law, or Education, or of cutting or killing CE, you’d have to save the academic colleges. Once a university starts to seriously cut academic positions or, even worse, academic departments or colleges, it will be decades before it is able to recruit quality faculty again. Reputation and research funding will go down the drain. Undergraduate and graduate enrollments will drop. Even if presidents and provosts choose that dangerous path, severe delays—or positive stops—will be encountered based on institutional regulations governing tenure, AAUP rules relating to declarations of fiscal exigency, and regional and disciplinary accreditation standards. In short, even if leaders opt to do so, cutting academics is too slow and uncertain to meet the rigid timelines of budget cutting.

And, even if cuts to the academic program are successfully made, these cuts will come at too high a cost for presidents, provosts, and their institutions. Provosts work for presidents; presidents work for their boards of trustees, and no deans or department chairs worth their salt will allow their academic units or significant portions of them to be taken down without aggressively mobilizing their students, faculty, alumni, and community peers and supporters to their cause. They will assert—with at least some truth—that the president and provost are undermining the institution’s academic quality and decreasing the value of the academic resource the public, through tuition and gifts, and the state, through annual appropriations, have built over extended periods. At least some, perhaps many, board of trustee members will agree with those claims. Life will become difficult for the president and provost. In the process, the institution will suffer. All will lose.

Presidents and provosts get and keep their positions by maintaining at every moment the support of at least 51% of the power of the institution. And where is that power? It exists in the colleges, their deans, department chairs, and faculty, and in the research enterprise that teams with the colleges and faculty. Even if the president and provost cut one college to spare others, the remaining deans and faculty will stay suspicious for a long time. Every act will be scrutinized. Cooperation will be strained.

But what are the financial, academic, and political costs of cutting Continuing Education? Not much. Even if the CE unit is profitable, the academic leaders will maintain their core business, safeguard academic quality, and protect themselves politically with deans and faculty by rapidly cutting CE and taking the one-time savings to cover first-year budget cuts. The deans and faculty will be very supportive. And even if they disband very successful, very profitable CE units, the presidents and provosts will have gained a year to figure out new solutions with the full backing of their deans and faculty. In an environment of trust, future cuts will come easier.

Not a comfortable situation for continuing educators, is it? Would you prefer an alternative? Here it is. Taking on an Engagement role in place of or in addition to normal CE functions turns the CE unit into the, or at least a, significant spokesman for the entire institution and its value and importance to the service area and its people. Instead of being “peripheral,” always living “outside the big tent,” CE with an Engagement mission can be a central voice demonstrating the central purpose and value of the university, its colleges, and faculty to the state and its people. And in this role, the unit will be appreciated for its continuing qualities: intelligence, flexibility, realism, budgetary acumen, and readiness to play a supporting role to advance the institution.

This central institutional role will bring it new resources, stability, and valuable contacts with deans, department chairs, and faculty as well as with upper administration. And in an academic environment where interactions across units are regular and the unit is seen as a valued partner, new and better relationships will arise, making daily business easier and better. And as the CE unit, in its expanded role, prospers, the entire institution it promotes will flourish. With each passing year, Engaged CE will become more integral to the institution’s central values, traditions, and success.

With an Engagement mandate, CE will become central, even critical, in documenting, branding, and marketing your institution. And in the process, you’ll benefit your school’s faculty, students, community, state, nation, and world in ways never before possible. At Emory, for example, an effective Engagement marketing strategy more than doubled annual giving. That additional funding produced more research, greater ability to address the issues of today and tomorrow, and better opportunities for students to become tomorrow’s teachers, innovators, and civic leaders.

It’s there for you. Get engaged.

This symposium is designed to bring together individuals interested in the technological aspects of online learning.  The symposium tracks focus on the technologies that drive online learning, highlighting research, applications and best practices of important emerging technological tools. Experts, intermediate users and novices are welcome to participate in symposium activities that will include face-to-face and virtual components.   

Online registration and additional information is available here.

For fifteen years, the Sloan-C International Conference on Online Learning has been the leading conference in online and blended learning, a place where participants share the most current research and emerging trends in the field. Join your colleagues in sunny Orlando, Florida November 3-5th for the 16th Annual Sloan-C International Conference on Online Learning. Together we will explore the latest research, effective practices, and promising new technologies, and learn what online and blended learning hold for ourselves, our institutions, and our society.

Don’t miss your opportunity to register at the reduced rate of $495 for regular attendees or $445 for Sloan-C members.  Early Bird registration deadline is October 15th.

Additional program information is available here. 

Don’t miss a great opportunity to present at the 16th Annual Sloan Consortium International Conference On Online Learning: "The Power of Online Learning:  Stimulating New Possibilities," to be held November 3-5, 2010 at the Caribe Royale Hotel and Resort in Orlando, FL. This conference strongly encourages presentations that report on online and blended learning research, theory, and practice at all levels. Proposals that address blended learning, issues of diversity, international applications of online learning, open educational resources, social networking, online learning and community colleges, and/or K-12 online education are especially encouraged.

Join NC State in Raleigh for the 11th annual meeting as we explore how universities "Sustain Authentic Engagement."

Visit the 2010 NOSC Website for more information.

The 2010 National Outreach Scholarship Conference will explore authenticity and sustainability as critical components of engaged scholarship. The important questions of what, where, who, how, and why will be the foci of the Conference reflected in five sections: Program, Place, People, Process, and Philosophy. These focus areas invite a diversity of perspectives and experiences reflecting the academy's authentic and sustained commitment to engaged discovery, learning, application, and integration.

Sponsored by the National Outreach Scholarship Conference partner universities. View a complete list of partner institutions.

To be added to the mailing list for this conference, please email ContinuingEducation@ncsu.edu