When the Georgia Center opened its doors in that first week of January 1957, the environment in which higher education operated was vastly different from today. Beginning with the decade of the 1960s, change in the academy began to occur in often dramatic fashion as our colleges and universities played a major role in the societal upheaval manifested in desegregation and the Vietnam War. After Vietnam, things calmed down a bit on campuses across the country. Then, it seems, it came time for putting the world and our lives on "fast forward" as advances in all areas of science and technology made us reconsider where we came from as living organisms, where we might be going, and, with the ever-increasing speed and power of our computers, whether it is possible to have access to everything that anybody knows, has said, or has written down -- ever!
Through these four decades, whatever the pace of life, the Georgia Center has worked to fulfill a vital mission of meeting the learning needs of adults by helping them satisfy educational demands created by the workplace, while also providing avocational counterpoint. Now, the Center must accomplish these objectives with a greater urgency than circumstances required in 1957, or at least not until they were stimulated by the launch of Sputnik in October of that same year. In many ways, that event seems to mark the beginning of a speedup in the changes affecting our lives, an acceleration which has never diminished.
In recognizing the 40th anniversary of the Georgia Center, those of us involved with the planning of the "official" celebratory events felt that we should pay tribute to what had gone before, but not dwell on the past as we prepare the Georgia Center for a future of complexity far greater than what could have been anticipated at that beginning in 1957. Goethe once observed that "the best thing which we derive from history is the enthusiasm it raises in us." The Georgia Center's 40 years of history have, indeed, left us enthusiastic about our past but, as John Gardner has commented, "the successfully renewing organization is one which focuses on what it is going to become and not what it has been."
To help us with the challenge of renewal and to assist in our enthusiastic reflection on the Center's history, we invited to Athens a citizen of the world, an individual who has seen uncommon and distinguished service to this nation in government, the private arena, and the academy, Professor Harlan Cleveland. Professor Cleveland is currently president of the World Academy of Art and Science, as he continues to model the creed of all continuing educators, that of remaining a lifelong learner.
Harlan spent a day with the faculty and staff of the Georgia Center and with invited colleagues from across the country, participating in what we described in commemorating our 40th anniversary as "A Celebration, with Conversations about the Future." Those "conversations" revolved about a theme he advanced, "Leadership and the Information Revolution." His insights about intuitive leadership, about working with chaos, about the complexity in our world and the issues with which we will deal in addressing diversity, and about the need for processing information ultimately into wisdom -- all provided a vitally renewing experience for those who participated. That, after all, is what continuing education or lifelong learning is about -- renewal.
The Georgia Center for Continuing Education's 40 years of history have benefited several million citizens with varied dimensions of educational outreach. Renewal of this living resource of the University must be accomplished through thoughtful, imaginative, and creative planning that is enthusiastically implemented, if the next 40 years are to be as successful. Such an undertaking can and will succeed by building on the partnerships that have sustained the Georgia Center throughout its existence. These partners working with the Center's faculty and staff include state government, both executive and legislative branches; the University community; the W. K. Kellogg Foundation; and, most essentially, the citizens of Georgia. All the partners have made the Center's first 40 years possible and, working together, a successful future is assured.
Web administrator: webmaster@gactr.uga.edu All contents copyright © 1997 University of Georgia Center for Continuing Education. All rights reserved. Last revised: January 23, 1998 URL: http://www.gactr.uga.edu/GCQ/gcqfall97/ibt.html