Commitment to adult learning

By Deborah Lilly

It’s Monday evening, and it’s been a long day for the dozen Advance students gathered for class in Hardacre Hall. Most of them have come straight from work and are using the few minutes before class to eat supper or catch-up on reading assignments. The students range in age from mid-20s to mid-50s. They are postal workers, factory workers, computer technicians, accountants, realtors, writers, and stay-at-home moms. What they have in common is the desire to earn a bachelor’s degree and earn it through the most straightforward route possible.

The Monday evening class is the 15th group of adults to take the journey through the Advance Program at Anderson University. These students began together in October and hope to graduate together in May 2005 with bachelor’s degrees in organizational leadership. They meet one night a week for four hours for 20 months. During the remainder of the week, they cram in as much homework as possible, including work on the final research project required to graduate.

The Advance Program is part of the university’s continuing commitment to the community and to adult education. Programs specifically for adult learners over age 25 began on the AU campus in the 1980s.

“There was an external demand on the university to help provide for the educational needs of adults in this community,” remembers Mike Collette, vice president for enrollment management and information systems. “A number of organizations were asking us if we would develop education programs for their employees.” At the same time, the university was asking itself what it meant to be part of the Anderson community and what were the university’s responsibilities to the community.

Already students 25 or older could come to AU for reduced tuition, taking classes on a space-available basis, and more than 100 adult students were attending AU. “In the early ’80s, a good part of our nursing enrollment was composed of adult students,” says Collette. He was asked to implement an adult education program at AU that would expand opportunities for adults in the community. In March 1987, the faculty learned of a proposed adult education program to begin by the next fall. “We had no adult education staff. There was no facility. There was no curriculum in place,” Collette says. A staff was hired and put in place in Bolitho House at the corner of University Boulevard and Cottage Avenue. Associate’s degrees in general studies and secretarial studies were developed and approved. When the doors opened the following August, 90 new adult students signed up for classes at AU — a large number of them employees of General Motors. Aleza Beverly BA ’83, associate dean of the School of Adult Learning, joined the staff in 1989. By 1991 enrollment of adult students grew to more than 350.

While successful the adult education programs met the needs of only a segment of adults in the Anderson community.

“We were only providing evening courses for students who wanted to attain associate’s degrees in general studies or general business,” Beverly explains. “If they wanted a four-year degree, we didn’t have anything in the evening to offer them. If they wanted a bachelor’s degree, they had to take daytime classes.”

Collette adds, “We also continued to receive requests from prospective adult learners who said they were not interested in going back to school on a part-time basis where it takes 12 years to earn a degree.”

A marketing firm assessed that most adults in the Anderson area who did not have bachelor’s degrees were interested in business. The university began the Advance Program and adopted curriculum for a Bachelor of Science degree focused in organizational leadership.

The Advance Program is designed for adults who are 25 or older and have a significant work history and approximately 50 semester hours of transferable college credit. While at AU, the Advance student focuses on the 13 classes for the major in organizational leadership and completes any of the university’s liberal arts requirements that have yet to be met. Students go through the program in cohorts, finishing and ending the program with the same classmates.

The university hired Doug Gambrall in 1998 to implement the Advance Program. After 15 years in the banking industry, Gambrall worked at Oakland City University as director of the bachelor’s degree completion program. He also taught evening classes at the University of Evansville’s American Institute of Banking. With the curriculum in place, Gambrall’s job at AU was to recruit students, find faculty, and work out the details for billing and registration. “I had to get to know the university, its departments, its people, and the way they did things and then look at how it could be transitioned to meet the needs of adult learners who wanted to be in an accelerated program,” he explained.

The first cohort began in January 1999. Many of the students were already enrolled in AU and had been trying to earn their degrees one class at a time, one semester at a time as their work and family schedules allowed.

“Part of the motivation and rationale for starting the Advance Program was that some adult students were commenting that they had been in school for some time now and they still had several classes to go,” Gambrall explains. While the first cohort welcomed students who had been in the university’s traditional program, it also attracted adults who had never before stepped foot in an AU classroom.

Chris Fogle joined the Advance Program last year. After high school, she attended both Oklahoma State University and Cameron University in Oklahoma. “Unfortunately, my focus then was on socializing and not on academics,” she says. “While I have some entertaining stories from those experiences, it was obvious that I wasn’t spending my parents’ money wisely.” She joined the workforce and over the years gained the experience needed to move into management positions. In 2000 she was the director of information technology for a small manufacturing company during an acquisition by a public company. “After I declined a relocation opportunity with the parent company, I found myself in a market that had become saturated and increasingly competitive,” she says. “For the first time in my 15-year career, I felt my lack of a degree was a glaring omission from my résumé.”

Fogle eventually found a job in information technology as the manager of eSystem support for Cardinal Health System, Inc. in Muncie, Ind., but she continued to work toward her degree.

Gambrall explains, “The features of this program are such that it allows students to minimize the amount of time in the classroom so they can keep their jobs but still go back to school full time. The focus is on the out-of-class time they spend in preparation. We rely on them, as adults, to be dedicated to completing their assignments outside of the classroom so that the amount of class time is narrowed and spent in interaction and discussion.”

Going to class only one night a week may be convenient, but Gambrall cautions, “Just because it’s convenient doesn’t mean it’s an easy thing to do.” For every four hours a student spends in one class, they can expect to do eight or more hours of work at home to prepare for the next class. At the same time, Advance students spend the entire 20 months working on their final research project.

In addition to school and a full-time job, Fogle is managing a family. She and her husband, Robert, have two children — Heather and Jonathan — who are very involved in high school sports and activities throughout the year.

“Missing the kids’ activities has by far been the hardest part of this experience,” Fogle says. But Heather and Jonathan are also part of the reason she sticks with the program. “My children have sacrificed the most by my attending school as an adult, and if I don’t stay in this program and finish then their sacrifice would have been for nothing. That is simply not an option.”

Most Advance students don’t want to begin a new career after they earn their degree but instead hope to secure their current jobs and become qualified for advancement within their companies. “I’ve spoken to people in the program who say they’re doing this because they are tired of being passed over for promotions,” says Gambrall. “They’ve had the experience, they’ve had the knowledge, but the job requirements said they also needed a degree.”

Since it began, the Advance Program has averaged three new cohorts a year, with the 16th cohort starting classes last month. Each new cohort begins with 18 to 20 students, but sometimes during that 20-month process in the program, life intervenes with a family crisis, a medical emergency, or an unexpected job situation. Knowing that, Gambrall says it is expected that, from those 16 to 20 new students, 14 will actually complete the program with their cohort. Those who have to step out for some reason are allowed to return to the program when they are able.

“The cohort model is structured to hopefully reduce the amount of attrition that occurs because the students within the cohort support each other,” says Gambrall. “If someone starts to struggle with something or feels overwhelmed, the classmates within the cohort provide encouragement or assistance to that student to allow him or her to stay at it and work through the core curriculum.”

Gambrall admits, “We would like to start more than three cohorts each year, but that hasn’t been the case. We have not seen remarkable growth, but we’ve held steady.”

Collette echoes Gambrall’s disappointment. While the level of quality and service the Advance Program provides has met the expectations set at the beginning of the program, administrators expected enrollment after five years to be higher than it is today. The enrollment, however, may reflect the decreasing numbers in the city’s workforce.

“We’ve come to realize that the downsizing of General Motors has had a significant effect on adult enrollment overall,” Collette explains. “In order to grow in the future, one of our challenges will be to help prospective students understand the value of continuing education, both personally and professionally.”

For some universities, an adult learning program has meant big business, but Collette says AU didn’t create the School of Adult Learning primarily as a source of revenue.

“Many schools have developed adult programs out of financial necessity. Schools that have suffered from enrollment loss viewed these new adult education programs as a means of providing financial stability. That’s not true for us. We developed these programs out of a true commitment to this community and this county,” Collette says.

For the most part, the university has marketed its Advance Program to people living within 25 miles of Anderson. If any expansion is to take place in the future, Collette says it will be in the breadth of programs offered by the School of Adult Learning and not in geography. The School of Adult Learning, after all, has its roots in being a place to benefit adult learners in the Anderson community.

“Our history is in this community, and we will continue to serve the residents of the community as part of our mission,” Collette says.

The School of Adult Learning has seen significant progress in the last 17 years. Besides the addition of the Advance Program, the School of Adult Learning has benefited from a move to Hardacre Hall, putting offices and classrooms in the same building. The program also offers a variety of online non-credit classes through Ed2Go, where adults can sign up for classes ranging from résumé writing to Web page design (visit the School of Adult Learning’s Web page) and on-site non-credit classes in everything from financial planning to photography. Beginning last fall, the School of Adult Learning has gone into area businesses and factories to set up training programs specific to each company’s needs.

Collette says it’s important for the School of Adult Learning to be more service-oriented in future endeavors — offering classes at times and places more convenient for adults in the community and offering a greater variety of programs. He adds that discussion is underway about adding another associate’s degree and a second accelerated bachelor’s degree. The associate’s degree would be in general studies but would allow for students to concentrate in business, computer science, or Christian ministries. He says that they have yet to research what second bachelor’s degree would best meet the needs of the community.

Even with the addition of the Advance Program and non-credit classes, Beverly says a good number of adults continue to pursue degrees in the university’s traditional undergraduate program. As far as she’s concerned, serving adults in the community is part of the university’s mission. “It is not restricted to 18- to 22-year-olds,” Beverly says. “Our mission is to educate all persons for a life of faith and service to the church and society. We would not be fulfilling our mission if we were not open to meeting the needs of adults.”

For more information about the Anderson University School of Adult Learning, call (765) 641-4250 or toll free at (877) 428-2765.