Back to the Future: Community Engagement and Metagogy

Introduction

At times, especially at those times when a society is in flux, confusion prevails and generally results in the retrenching of mindsets. Adult Education endeavors have been no exception to such communal psycho-socio behavior over the decades in the USA. Yet, DePaul University established a “new, experimental unit of study” to be called the “Experimental School of DePaul University, unless someone thinks of a more appropriate name” (Richardson, 1971). In 1972, DePaul University in Chicago trail-blazed an approach to education for adults in its undergraduate, and later its graduate programs. The concept, initiated by Vincentian priest Fr. Richardson, was inspired by the Zeitgeist of the time, which opposed conventional banking education as it was critiqued by Freire, (1970); and it built upon the long-standing tradition of democratic ideals and critical reflection in education that Dewey espoused (1938). In the words of the Rev. John T. Richardson, the first objective of this school was:

Hence, a college within the University, called the School for New Learning (SNL), was grounded in the emerging education philosophies of the time, primarily experiential lean ring theory. (Kolb, 1984), the assessment of prior learning, and competence-based education within student-designed curricula. A paradigm for educating adults, SNL survived under the leadership of its founders and early leaders. However, as higher education institutions sought economic survival, in part by entering the arena of workforce development, conventional instructional approaches veered off those earlier successful innovations that had combined the liberal arts with preparatory and continuing professional study.

Conventional higher education approaches date back to the early 6^th Century, and current-day North American university programs are still modeled after those of the cathedral schools and monasteries of the Middle Ages (Begley & Koterski, 2005). Today, few university degree programs offer alternatives to traditional higher education models, even with curricula and delivery methods based on their interpretations of andragogy (Knowles 1970, 1980, 1977). Perhaps, universities risk non-accreditation were they to color too much outside of the lines of conventional program designs and content; and sticking to conventions in practices reverberates in the expectations of employers, students, and private and public funders. And so, the emerging education model of the visionary priests at DePaul University was not preserved over the decades. At DePaul University, too, eventually the resultant mission creep gave way to retrench education programming to the conventions of the academy.

In such social contexts (Jarvis, 1987), more often than not do we forego the possibilities that are found in the knowledge and practices in higher education around the world or outside of the ivory tower among our own communities. Although models for Universities of Applied Sciences (e.g., the German Fachhochschule) have existed all along, by and large the USAsian higher education industry perpetuated conventions in the development and delivery of education and training programs into the 21^st Century. And few are the institutions of higher education that collaboratively design programs and learning activities with stakeholders not among their midst.