Highlights of the Academic Year 2002-03

Opening Address at the HEAA Banquet
June 3, 2003

by Dean Michael Shinagel

Dean Michael Shinagel

It is a special treat for us to be back home in Quincy House for our annual HEAA Banquet, especially after experiencing last year's banquet at the Sheraton Commander Hotel, where we suffered the indignities of a cash bar and the inconvenience of a seating arrangement reminiscent of a Carnival Cruise liner. Here at least we are treated like an extended Harvard family, with an open bar, decent sight lines to the stage, and plenty of vino for communal veritas! We know that the move back to Quincy House was appreciated by our alumni and alumnae because this banquet was sold out by last week, and we also know that we will be well looked after because the Quincy Dining Hall Manager, Mark Petrino, ALB '02, is one of us.

This year marks the 93rd anniversary of the Harvard Extension School and the 35th anniversary of the HEAA. I can report with pride that this year's Harvard Extension School Class of 2003 constitutes one of the most distinguished classes in our history. This academic year we will award 215 Extension degrees and 247 graduate certificates for a grand total of 462 new members of the HEAA. More than 78 percent of the ALB degree recipients, nearly four out of five, will graduate with honors.

For nearly 20 years I have tried to make outstanding ALB graduates eligible for induction by the Harvard Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, but, alas, the oldest academic honor society in the US has frustrated me in this endeavor. This year the Administrative Board of the Harvard Extension School approved my request that we form a chapter of Alpha Sigma Lambda, the national honor society for continuing education students, and I am pleased to report that we are now the duly inaugurated Phi Beta Chapter of Alpha Sigma Lambda. Yesterday we had a historic induction service at the Harvard Faculty Club for the first class of inductees, who numbered a lucky 13.

The HEAA has also shown robust growth in recent years. When it was formed in 1968, the HEAA served as the alumni(ae) parent organization for 300 members. By the end of last year we had some 9,700 alumni(ae) of the Harvard Extension School. With the addition of this year's graduates, membership in the HEAA will exceed for the first time the magic number of 10,000. This will give new meaning to the HEAA members when they have occasion to sing the traditional Harvard fight song: "Ten Thousand Men of Harvard!" But they may sing, with appropriate political correctness, of "Ten Thousand Men and Women of Harvard Extension School!"

A traditional feature of the Harvard Extension School mission has been to "develop innovative courses and teaching techniques that enhance the learning of adult students." This has involved the introduction of new technology both to improve the learning process and to deliver courses to "distance students" locally, nationally, and internationally. The Harvard Extension School pioneered courses via educational television in the 1950s with WGBH and then to US Navy personnel (via kinescopes on nuclear submarines) in the 1960s.

In the past seven years we have expanded our distance courses significantly, from a handful at the outset to 37 this year, including six Harvard College courses. Although most of the courses were in the field of computer science, we also offered courses in biology, environmental management, Greek literature, philosophy, and government. These courses enrolled nearly 2,000 students and accounted for more than 2,500 enrollments, which means that 15 percent of all Extension students enrolled in a distance course, although only 6 percent of our courses were distance.

Harvard Extension School continues to serve Harvard staff through the auspices of the Harvard Tuition Assistance Plan (TAP). This year we noted that nearly 3,000 of the course enrollments (12 percent) were by Harvard staff members taking advantage of TAP benefits. This year 18 Harvard staff will be awarded Extension undergraduate and graduate degrees.

Another notable initiative this year was the Mathematics for Teaching Program, a collaborative effort of the Harvard Mathematics Department, the Boston Public Schools, and the Harvard Extension School devoted to improving math education and MCAS scores in Boston. This successful program provided scholarships and courses for 121 Boston middle and high school teachers who accounted for 233 enrollments in Extension School math courses, and was cited in the Boston Globe as a model of its kind.

Our Extension faculty and our course program continue to receive high marks from our students. On a scale of 1 (low) to 5 (high), our courses were evaluated an impressive 4.3 and our faculty an even more impressive 4.5.

The key programs in the Harvard Extension School that deal with international students are the CSS and IEL. It is remarkable that the Harvard Extension School, which for most of its history served only local students from Greater Boston, this year enrolled students whose citizenship represented a total of 126 countries from around the world. The CSS Program, for example, had two-thirds of its 192 graduates this year come from 35 countries, with Brazil, Turkey, Colombia, India, and Mexico producing the most CSS graduates. Similarly, our IEL Program in the Harvard Extension School reports that its 1,500 students this year represented 79 countries from every continent and many an archipelago, with Brazil, Mexico, Japan, and Korea having the largest number.

The Harvard Extension School has given undergraduate and graduate instruction to more than 400,000 women and men in its nine decades of operation, but, as I note at each Commencement, "many are called but few are chosen" in that only about 10,000 of more than 400,000 actually have earned Harvard Extension School degrees and graduate certificates. That puts all of you in very select company, and on behalf of the Harvard Extension School faculty and staff, I congratulate this year's graduates and salute the returning alumni and alumnae on your academic achievement.