President's Letters

Common Beliefs Among UCEA Members

(UCEA InFocus, April 2005)
Roger Whitaker, UCEA President 2005-2006

The members of UCEA have long known that one day the best practices of continuing education would be revealed as core capacities essential for the future of higher education. Increasingly recognized as valued experts with respect to curricular innovation, teaching and learning, community engagement, and the management of resources, today's CE leaders-like you-are helping colleges and universities address the requirements for highly effective education to support a knowledgebased economy, a stable social system, and a participatory political ethos.

It is my great pleasure to represent you as the president of UCEA for 2005-2006. I have used the past year, as president-elect, to listen. I have not only come to appreciate the strengths represented by our remarkable diversity but also am even more struck now by what we share in common. It is clear to me that we gather in our association for a reason. We come together-in person or virtually-throughout the year to share our accomplishments, learn best practices, reflect on experience, stew about common concerns, and refresh a vision of our intended future. And we gather because, in the end, we share a common belief.

We share a belief that education is the transformational promise of our world, and we believe that extending opportunities for students to access education is essential to the well-being of individuals and of our communities. In this respect, while our association continues its firm commitment to assisting the professional development of our members, we are equally committed to igniting our current capacities to advance the noble purposes of higher education.

I look forward to an exciting year as president of UCEA; a year in which we will fervently reflect on our purposes as an association, advance our responsibilities to serve the emergent and enduring needs of our members, strengthen our voice in public dialogue about the future of higher education, and fearlessly look to our next decade asking: What shall we cause?

UCEA Goals and Initiatives, 2005-2006

Goal One: Establish a lifelong learning relationship with every member.

Initiatives for this goal include: launching a UCEA Executive Leadership Academy for current deans, vice presidents and senior higher education administrators, at New York University in the summer of 2005; promoting utilization of UCEA's web-based Member Forum as a source of critical information and as a mechanism for networking among members within and across regions, communities of practice, knowledge networks, and commissions; and undertaking a review of UCEA's portfolio of professional development Modules with the aim both of updating existing offerings and identifying important new topics for module creation.

Goal Two: Create mechanisms to attract and engage members and provide relevant services of value.

Initiatives for this goal include: adding a descriptive tagline to "UCEA" to better convey the broad range of strategic intentions/responsibilities now associated with continuing education while preserving the Association's brand; developing a special brochure to publicize the wide range of professional development curricular opportunities offered by the Association to current and prospective UCEA members; and encouraging institutional representatives to use professional memberships in UCEA to attract new members, including faculty, museum educators, and other professionals working in fields with a natural affinity to UCEA.

Goal Three: Develop the capacity to define the evolving field of continuous and distributed learning.

Initiatives include: focusing the Association's September 2005 Executive Assembly on ways CE units are conceptualizing their role within communities, based on the results of a survey of UCEA institutional representatives; securing funding to develop a new Association publication that incorporates the current and emerging curricular models for post-baccalaureate professional certificate and master's programs; and appointing a task force to examine the status of research in the Association, assess the critical research needs of member institutions and set a research agenda as we look forward to our 100th anniversary.