Coming Back For More

Summer School students who happened to walk through the Yard or have lunch at the Union during the last two weeks may have been puzzled by the large numbers of gray heads around. Probably very few of them stopped to inquire about them but if they did, chances are they spoke to participants in the Harvard or Radcliffe alumni colleges, who have taken over Kirkland and Currier Houses for about a month.

Both the Harvard alumni office and the Radcliffe Institute offer alumni colleges, each giving three week-long sessions on three different subjects and each open to Harvard and Radcliffe alumni. The participants do a fair amount of advance reading, then spend their week at the college going to lectures and discussing the material. Peter D. Shultz '52, general secretary of the Associated Harvard Alumni, who piloted the first alumni college five years ago, says the alumni office has found that alumni respond best to this kind of intensive work on a single topic.

"If you want to get people to accept continuing education," he says, "you have to do it in small chunks so they can fit it into their busy lives, and in specific enough content so they can really focus on it--because that's how a mature person solves problems."

And indeed, Shultz may be right. Administrators of both programs have found that the intensive week-long programs are attractive to the alumni, who couldn't come for longer periods because they can't leave their jobs or their children. Kim M. Anway, the coordinator for this year's Harvard alumni college, says that an experimental program taught by Edwin O. Reischauer several years ago lasted ten days, but that both the participants and the faculty involved found it too long and intensive. Nancy R. Downey, who directs the Radcliffe Institute's alumni program says that a week seems to be the right length of time because people can fit it into their summer vacation without taking too much time out of general relaxation. Since the colleges don't give any kind of credit to the participants, she says, alumni are not willing to come for larger blocks of time even if they're interested in the topic.

The alumni office and the Radcliffe Institute take very different approaches to choosing. The alumni office has found that what Anway calls the "stellar approach"--finding well-known faculty members who are willing to teach a session on their specialty--gets the best response from alumni, while Downey says the Radcliffe program, which is only in its second year, is more intimate because it is smaller. "We're not in competition with Harvard's huge program, but we try to complement it," she says.

The difference is clear in this year's topics. The Harvard alumni college offered a session called "Four American Centuries," with Professors Donald H. Fleming, Bernard Ballyn, Frank B. Freidel, Oscar Handlin. Stephan A. Thernstrom, and Stephen W. Botein '63--Dele Simmonds '52, a Radcliffe alumna who attended the session, says the saw three of their names mentioned in the New York Times during the week before she came. The second session was "devoted to a provocative look at controversial issues in the area of science and medicine," the brochure says, with Professors Everett I. Mendelsohn, Barbara G. Rosenkrantz, and lectures by Leon Eisenberg, Jean Mayer, and Stephen Weinberg. The third session concentrated on the politics and history of Soviet Russia, with Adam B. Ulam, Edward L. Keenan, Donald L. Fanger, and Marshall I. Goldman. Each session drew between 75 and 100 people.

The Radcliffe Institute's summer offerings were much less flamboyant. Two of the sessions were taught by Ruth Whitman, a poet who has published several books and who teaches one of the seminars in the full year program. The first session, which drew 40 people this year, was an introduction to poetry, what Whitman calls "exploring its sources" Participants may not be experienced poets, but they all experiment during the week, reading their work aloud for others to comment on. The second session, which took place this week, was created at the demand of alumni who attended a session similar to this year's first and is an intensive poetry workshop for people who have attended the first session or who are experienced poets. The course was limited to 25 so that Whitman could work individually with each participant. Like Harvard's session on "Four American Centuries," Radcliffe's third session is tied in with the Bicentennial. Diane K. McGuire, who also teaches in the Institute's full-year program, will examine the historical gardens and land-scapes in the area.

People attend the programs for different reasons. Both colleges are open to all alumni of the University and to non-alumni who are interested in the subjects offered. Harvard has found that more participants come from the fields of business or education than any other career categories, but, as Shultz points out, those are the two most widely chosen careers for Harvard alumni. About 30 per cent of the participants have been to other Harvard alumni colleges, with some people returning year-after year. The Radcliffe program is too new to really know where its market lies, Downey says, but she feels that the poetry workshops have attracted the "closet poets--people who love to write and never tell anyone."

Administrators, teachers, and participants agree that nostalgia for the University has very little to do with why alumni come back in the summer. Elizabeth E. Kimball, associate secretary for the alumni office's continuing education program, says, "By and large, the people who come to the alumni colleges are not the same as the alumni who come to the Harvard clubs, who are terribly active in alumni affairs like fund-raising and reunions." The alumni who return to the college, she says, respond through "intellectual stimuli rather than football games."

"After all, there are thousands of alumni," she says, "and with such a large group there has to be some amount of stratification and diversity."

On the other hand, Shultz feels that the alumni colleges pull in a cross-section of alumni, "from J.V. football players to poets." "In all the years we've been in the alumni business," he says, "we've missed the common denominator--education."

Faculty members who have taught at the colleges agree that nostalgia plays a minor role in attracting alumni. Whitman says she feels that her students are people who have "promised themselves a goodie, a chance to give themselves something for themselves, away from their kids and their families"--a chance, to learn about something they're interested in. Fleming says he did not detect any nostalgia in his students, but felt they were really interested in the material. The questions and discussions were generally very good, he says, and participants had really done all the advance reading.

And after all, it makes sense that people who come because they're interested would really do all the work and stay attentive throughout the week. The alumni college students pay $260 for a session at the Harvard alumni college and $270 for a week at the Radcliffe Institute, and obviously no one would spend so much time and money unless they were ready to do all the work and to really make an effort to learn. Kimball says. "There is a bit of undeniable nostalgia and it can't be avoided and I wouldn't want to, but if that's what brings people here it certainly isn't what keeps them for a week."

Ideas for the Harvard programs just sort of emerge, she says. The alumni office asks participants for ideas and if one comes up repeatedly they decide to offer a program on it. Harvard's alumni college has had its greatest successes with general cultural themes concentrating on one country because the faculty can weave art, literature politics and history into the program.

"It's stuff they can't get out of the newspaper." Anway says, material which is general enough to interest nearly everyone. Last year's program included a week of Greek and Cretan culture with John H. Finley '25, and a week on East Asia with Reischauer and John K. Fairbank '29. This year's science and medicine program was experimental, and no one seems to be quite sure what its appeal was; but it was successful, with 75 registrants, and Kimball feels that future programs will probably include some kind of general science course.

Kimball says the subject matter "isn't as important as you'd think. It's the faculty that really draws the alumni in."

But the alumni office realizes that many people will want to return for a new subject, and so it changes the programs every year. Once an idea is agreed upon, the office sends out 80,000 brochures to the alumni and publishers advertisements in the graduate school publications and other magazines. Anway says that much of their advertising is by word of mouth, as people who come one year tell their friends and acquaintances about the college.

Shultz says the idea of the alumni college started floating around in the early 1940s, because it seemed "stupid not to use the University's academic facilities" to bring the alumni into the University community. At that time, however, he says the faculty and the administration weren't interested because they didn't feel comfortable with the alumni.

"Alumni were thought of as racoon-skin-capped, musket-carrying people who only showed up for football games--and thank God the stadium's across the river," he says. But that attitude changed with a new batch of senior faculty. Shultz adds, and when Dartmouth and Cornell started alumni programs the Harvard alumni office begn to work on a comprehensive proposal.

"We kept beating the drum, and finally got the trustees to set up a committee to examine the existing programs," he says.

In 1970 the committee gave the program a firm recommendation, and President Pusey, "who was very mellow" by his last year in office, agreed to it, Shultz recalls. "His attitude was, if you can talk the faculty into it, go ahead," he says.

The first program was offered in 1971, and it received double the number of applications the alumni office had expected. "The comments we got justified our theoretical base." Shultz says, and the alumni office's continuing education program became an established reality.

Since then, the office has been experimenting with different programs aimed at different kinds of alumni. One of the problems with the alumni college is that it tends to draw the older, wealthier alumni, and the office is working now at finding ways to attract a broader group. "We mainly get middle-aged to older alumni, between the classes of '40 and '50." Anway says, although they get alumni from both extremes as well some come with their babies, she says, and Helen J. Almy '05 says she plans to attend this week's session on Soviet Russia "unless I feel too old by the time it starts." Younger alumni find it hard to leave their children and jobs and often can't afford the trip to Cambridge.

The office is considering starting week-end alumni programs at Harvard during the year, and earlier this summer it ran a Thursday-through-Sunday program on American literature at a college campus in northern California. Kimball, who attended that session, says the alumni who came were much younger, on the average, than those who come to Cambridge. Alan E. Heimert '49, Cabot Professor of American Literature, who taught the California session, says he feels it was very successful, although he adds it was "exhausting" because it was so intensive. The alumni office plans to offer a similar program next year in southern California, Kimball says, because there is a high concentration of University alumni in that area.

The alumni office also plans to begin to explore new formats and areas. On August 6-40 alumni and two experts on Nordic culture, Janet and Ulf Rasmussen, will leave for a cruise in Scandinavia. While the cost of the cruise--between $2074 and $3471--may keep many younger alumni from joining it, Kimball says he feels it is important that the office continue to explore different possibilities for continuing education.

A recent opinion poll of Harvard alumni showed that contributions increase when the University makes efforts to keep in touch with its graduates, but everyone involved with the alumni colleges seems to feel that fundraising is none of their business. Downey, Shultz and Kimball emphasize their lack of interest in increasing donations.

"We don't know how it affects donations," Shultz says, "but we feel that if you send 300 people out across the country talking about how Harvard's teaching has improved, it can't help but help in the long run."

Kimball points out that the alumni office is designed to be distinct from fundraising efforts, and she says it would "resist anyone interested in raising funds sponsoring an alumni college." Every alumni college is designed to break even, she says, and if it isn't self-supporting, it won't be offered.

The alumni colleges have only one stated goal: to offer alumni a chance to continue their education after they graduate. Shultz says he feels it is especially important for the middle-aged alumni who want to enrich their lives, who feel they're missing something in mid-career. "There are tremendously exciting possibilities in continuing education, and we've just cracked the surface," he says. Downey's attitude is similar. "I'm really excited by the adult capacity to grow, to learn, to develop," she says. If attendance is any indication, the alumni themselves seem to share in this excitement, returning year after year to programs which may or may not have any connection to their lives beyond the University's reach.