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A Vintage Year

Annual Report to the Harvard Extension
Alumni Association

Dean Michael Shinagel

This year marks the 88th anniversary of the Harvard Extension School. Unlike the first year, when 16 courses were taught and 863 women and men enrolled from the Boston community, this year 588 courses were taught and 13,259 people enrolled from Boston, New England, the United States, and nearly 50 countries around the world. We have come a long way since our founding.

Dean Michael Shinagel

For most of its history, the Harvard Extension School has functioned as a local institution, serving adult women and men from the Boston area. Today, with our graduate certificate and master's degree programs, we have become a regional, national, and international institution. For example, more than half of this year's 211 graduates of the Certificate of Special Studies in Administration and Management Program (CSS) represent 34 foreign countries. The Harvard Extension School, like Harvard University, is becoming increasingly "internationalized," bringing together adult learners from many regions of the world to study at Harvard in the evenings for degrees and certificates before returning to their home countries to assume responsible positions in their societies.

The Harvard Extension School Class of 1998 constituted an academically distinguished and numerically historic addition to the ranks of the Harvard Extension Alumni Association (HEAA). We awarded 16 Associate in Arts (AA) degrees. The majority of the AA recipients plan to continue studying for Bachelor of Liberal Arts (ALB) degrees at the Harvard Extension School.

We also awarded 115 ALB degrees, with more than 70 percent of the recipients graduating with honors. The age range for the undergraduate degree recipients was from 20 to 81 years--a span of more than three score. Since nine out of ten of the ALB graduates transferred from other colleges, some managed to complete the degree--with two full years of transfer credit and by attending the Harvard Extension School full time--in two years. They are recognized as our "hares." But the sentimental favorite each year is the lone "tortoise" who takes a long time to cross the finish line. This year's tortoise award went to Sarabelle Madoff Annenberg, who started by taking two courses in 1959, took another course in 1977, and since 1986 has taken courses steadily in order to complete her degree with honors some 39 years after her first Extension School class.

Our ALB graduates transferred from such local institutions as Boston College, Boston University, Northeastern University, and Tufts University. They also came from such Ivy League universities as Columbia, Cornell, and Princeton. And they came from overseas institutions in China, Ghana, Great Britain, Japan, Mexico, Poland, and Russia. Some of these ALB graduates indicated plans to continue their education either at the Harvard Extension School or at leading graduate schools in the United States and abroad.

We awarded 72 Master of Liberal Arts (ALM) degrees during the year. The students ranged in age from their mid-twenties to their mid-sixties. Their occupations were highly diverse: two editors and five teachers, a policeman and an FBI agent, an IRS inspector and a city councilor, a chemist and a classicist, a half-dozen biotechnical researchers, and several entrepreneurs. Two members of the ALM Class of 1998 will enter medical school, one will go to veterinary school, another will attend law school, and several will pursue doctoral studies in various fields.

The ALM graduates came from many parts of the United States and from Taiwan, Norway, Colombia, Israel, and Japan. Some moved to Cambridge to pursue this degree by leaving homes and jobs in Florida, Texas, California, Colorado, and Missouri.

We always are gratified to witness how the Harvard Extension School serves not only adult students from across the United States and around the world, but also colleagues on the Harvard staff. Twenty of the undergraduate degrees were awarded to staff representing Harvard Business School, Harvard Medical School, Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Central Administration. Similarly, four graduate degree recipients were staff holding administrative positions in Harvard Medical School, Radcliffe College, and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

A total of 203 degrees were awarded, as well as 260 graduate certificates in Administration and Management (CSS), Applied Sciences (CAS), Public Health (CPH), Museum Studies (CMS), and Publishing and Communications (CPC). These 463 graduates of the Class of 1998 have joined the ranks of the HEAA, which now numbers well into the 5,000s and, after next year's graduation, we expect the HEAA to reach the 6,000 mark.

On the second of June I had the honor of hosting the annual HEAA banquet at Quincy House, where I just completed my 12th year as Master (as, indeed, I marked my 23rd year as Dean of the Harvard Extension School). My colleague, Dean John Adams, informed me that the banquet was the second largest gathering of Extension alumni in recent years, and it was a pleasure for me and my Extension School colleagues to see so many familiar faces, as well as some new ones, at this celebratory gathering. Among the 150 guests in attendance, we noted graduates representing five decades (according to their graduating classes): the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. We had alumni present who attended the very first alumni gatherings: Edgar Grossman, ABE '66, who founded the HEAA in 1968 and was its first elected president, and Ella Smith, also ABE '66, another past HEAA president. We also had in attendance Ruth Gove, ABE '67, Allan R. Crite, ABE '68, and Catherine Minahan, ABE '71, who have attended most banquets over the years. Many other loyal and dedicated members of the HEAA who also have been active for many years were in attendance.

Dean Reginald Phelps was convalescing at a rehabilitation home and could not attend this year but, at age 88, he is still keen in mind and we all remember him fondly and wish him well.

The HEAA banquet enabled me to express my personal appreciation to the officers of the organization, President Kelley Landolphi, ALM '93, and his associates, as well as our HAA Representative Larry Sheehan, ALM '94. On a more bittersweet note, I observed that Dean John F. Adams was retiring in June after nearly 33 years of dedicated service to the Harvard Extension School. He favored us with a witty and engaging talk about his career at Harvard, and he will receive a Harvard rocking chair in recognition of his years of service. At the Commencement exercises he was awarded the Dean's Distinguished Service Award. Dean Adams was an indispensable member of the Extension School staff and he will be missed, but we wish him well in his active retirement.

The academic year 1997-98 has been a vintage one for us, and I conclude by wishing all HEAA members our best, and extending to all my faculty and staff colleagues my personal thanks for their efforts to make the Harvard Extension School the singular learning community that it is.

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