President's Letter

An Endless Adventure

UCEA InFocus, December 2009 (PDF) Patricia Book, UCEA President 2009-2010

The pursuit of human knowledge is an endless adventure. It is one that we have the joy of supporting for adult learners across the country. In our field of continuing education, we take pride in spanning the boundaries between the traditional academic pursuit of knowledge and the creation of new models and programs that serve the needs of adult learners and our faculty entrepreneurs. As members of a professional association, we also are concerned with our own professional development and how to share the knowledge we create about our field with each other so we can become better and more responsive to our audiences and faculty. The pursuit of knowledge can lead us (teachers and learners) down many paths with unanticipated delights along the way. The saying, “It is never too late to learn,” applies not only to our students but also to us, as practitioners.

At the recent European University Continuing Education Network (EUCEN) meeting in Jönköping, Sweden, the Dean of the Högskolan för Lärande och Kommunikation, welcomed us by pointing out that “all knowledge is fundamentally practical.” Think then about our endless adventure in all its dimensions and the ultimate practicality of all human knowledge and how it is discovered, integrated, applied, and taught.

When considering how knowledge is generated, I came across a recent New York Times piece by Miquel Helft on Online Maps. Much like contributors to Wikipedia, Miquel notes, are the activities of an army of volunteer (amateur) cartographers who are fixing mistakes and adding information to existing digital maps in Google’s online maps. Miquel says that “they are democratizing a field that used to be the exclusive domain of professionals and specialists. And, the information they gather is becoming increasingly valuable commercially.” This model of volunteer knowledge generation, creation, and dissemination is one of the current fundamentally important shifts in our culture. We should pay attention to it and consider the implications of this development not simply for the delivery of higher education but also for the very role of our institutions.

Another important shift regards the increasing privatization of higher education in the United States—that is, the transfer of higher education costs from the state to the individual learner. This is not sustainable, especially in a recession. At the recent EUCEN meeting of continuing educators across Europe, I found different funding models. Countries such as Sweden, collect sufficient taxes to be able to provide continuing education free of charge to adult learners, including new immigrants from abroad. These immigrants are being taught the language, provided basic education, as well as technical training at state expense to facilitate immigrants’ integration into a new society.

UCEA has several initiatives underway that relate to knowledge generation. A UCEA Task Force is involved in development of a CEPedia. Another UCEA committee has undertaken the review of our current Community of Practice (CoP) framework. There is significant potential for UCEA to strengthen the capacity of its CoPs to serve both the transitory interests of members and the ongoing communities of common experience. The Association is preparing to help the CoP to become a much more vital resource for our members.

The benefits of being part of UCEA are immediate and vital to our success as continuing educators in a context where much is expected of us by society and by our institutions. It’s an exciting time for us in this field. UCEA provides us with opportuni¬ties to be successful in this endless adventure for knowledge, including professional development, sharing of best practices, professional networking and research on trends. Take advantage of every opportunity. You will find a welcoming community here.

— Patricia Book