Giving Back

by Christopher Queen

Implicit in a quality education is a sense of noblesse oblige, the desire to repay those who have nurtured us--the families and friends, neighborhoods and institutions that have shaped us. Such "giving back" is ritualized when graduates turn to tip their caps to parents during Commencement exercises. At such times a circle is completed, as these newly educated women and men embark on new paths of service--to wider and wider communities.

Institutions of higher learning are no different from their graduates in this respect; they also find ways of giving back to the communities that sustain them. Since its founding in 1909–1910, the Harvard Extension School has been one of Harvard University's ways of giving back to the citizens of Cambridge and Boston. Its founder, Harvard President A. Lawrence Lowell, wished to extend the vision of his ancestor, John Lowell, Jr. (1799–1836), whose Lowell Institute was dedicated to "public lectures to be delivered in Boston . . . for the promotion of the moral and intellectual and physical instruction or education of the citizens of the said city of Boston." Today, as the Lowell Institute continues to offer programs throughout the city, two of its most distinguished programs, the Harvard Extension School and WGBH radio and television, undertake to educate students, listeners, and viewers throughout the United States and in many countries of the world.

The Extension School's many firsts in community service deserve a place in the annals of continuing higher education in America: noncredit courses broadcast on WGBH radio in 1952; credit courses telecast on WGBH television in 1957; courses on film offered to naval personnel on surface ships and nuclear submarines beginning in 1961; and the national broadcast of Extension School courses by the National Center for School and College Television in 1967. Meanwhile, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences regularly approved Extension School degree and graduate certificate programs to meet the evolving needs of nontraditional students in the Hub and beyond: the Bachelor of Liberal Arts (ALB), the Associate in Arts (AA), the Master of Liberal Arts (ALM), the ALM in Information Technology, graduate certificate programs in seven fields, a diploma program in English language for non-native speakers, and a diploma in premedical studies. Today, more than 40 Extension School courses are offered on the Internet to students locally and around the world.

Scholarships are perhaps the most direct way that the Harvard Extension School says "thank you" to the citizens of Cambridge and Boston--our oldest and most faithful supporters. Each year dozens of high school students and teachers from Cambridge and Boston are nominated for the Lowell or Cambridge Rindge and Latin Scholarships by their high schools. Six employees of the City of Cambridge take graduate Certificate of Special Studies in Administration and Management (CSS) courses under the Leonard J. Russell Scholarships. Similarly, six employees of the City of Boston take CSS courses under the new Brian J. Honan Scholarship, named for the late city councillor. Ten Allston-Brighton residents qualify for the new Allston-Brighton Community Scholarships (full tuition for any course), and each year up to 30 more residents qualify for tuition-free courses in the Institute for English Language (IEL) Programs.

"I have learned more English in three months at the Extension School than I did in the three years since I came from Russia," reports retired schoolteacher Yelena Dergacheva, 68, one of this spring's Allston-Brighton English language scholars. Boston police officer Margaret "Peggy" Dibuduo, another Allston-Brighton resident, earned an A– in her first course under the Honan Scholarship program. With degrees from Emerson College and UMass-Boston, Peggy says, "Human Resource Management was one of the best courses in my college career--and one that will help me serve the community better."

Again the circle is closed, and the vision of John Lowell and President Lowell, of Deans Reginald Phelps and Michael Shinagel, and of the many others who have sustained and guided the Harvard Extension School endures: a vision of "giving back."