Thomas J. SORK

International Adult and Continuing Education Hall of Fame Inducts Class of 2023

Opus_2023_3_Sork_html_43d53bd0e72965ad

On October 3, 2023, seven outstanding educators were inducted into the International Adult and Continuing Education Hall of Fame (IACEHOF) during a ceremony held as part of the annual confernce of the American Association for Adult and Continuing Education (AAACE) in Lexington, Kentucky, USA. The Hall was established at the University of Oklahoma, USA, in 1993 to honor individuals worldwide who have made distinguished contributions to the field of adult and continuing education and to serve as a record and inspiration for the next generation of continuing education leaders. The Hall also has an active European Chapter that hosts virtual meetings of members and encourages nominations from the region.

The 2023 induction marks the 27th anniversary of the Hall. Each year, many worthy individuals are nominated by their colleagues and other members of the Hall. The contributions of nominees—both academic and professional—are reviewed by a committee consisting of previous inductees that then makes recommendations to the Hall’s Board of Directors. Those selected are invited to an annual induction ceremony which is typically held somewhere in North America or Europe, often as part of a larger related event. The 2022 induction was held in Cork, Ireland, as part of the ASEM (Asia-Europe Meeting) Global Lifelong Learning Week celebrations hosted by University College Cork.

Class of 2023 Individual Inductees

Following are brief profiles of each member of the Class of 2023. For more detailed information on members of the Hall and how to submit a nomination or make a donation, please visit the Hall of Fame website.

Opus_2023_3_Sork_html_de7b3f9cc7facedc

Reading Left to Right: John Boulmetis, William J. Rothwell, Aaron Benavot, Katarina Popovic (accepted the Organization Award on behalf of the International Council for Adult Education (ICAE), Kimberly D. Osborne, Uwe Gartenshlaeger, John Henschke (accepted award on behalf of John Parker), Anke Grotlüschen

Aaron Benavot. Benavot has been a strong, unwavering, and innovative voice in international policy and monitoring discussions of adult learning and education and lifelong learning. His involvement in the development, drafting, and dispersing of seven UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Reports represents a seminal contribution to the international field of adult and continuing education.

Benavot is professor of global education policy for the Department of Educational Policy and Leadership in the School of Education at the University at Albany–SUNY, a position he has held since 2008. There, his interests center on comparative education research, global education policy, and the interaction between education and sustainable development. His scholarship critically examines primary and secondary education and the spread of national and international assessments.

John Boulmetis. Boulmetis is a distinguished adult educator known for his work at the University of Rhode Island (URI) and his contributions to the field through involvement with the American Association for Adult Education (AAACE). At URI, he redesigned the Master of Arts degree in adult education, making it the largest MA program at the university. Over the course of his career, he served as major adviser for more than 300 MA and PhD students and was the principal investigator on projects dealing with industry-based training, adult basic education, experience-based career education, community education, gerontology, vocational education, and human service agencies across the US Northeast.

In 1985, he collaborated with the U.S. Department of the Navy to offer the MA in adult education with a specialization in Education Management and Training Specialist (ETMS) for officers of the Newport Navy Base. In 1987, he was named the Rhode Island Adult Educator of the Year by the Rhode Island Association for Adult Education (RIAACE).

Uwe Gartenschlaeger. Gartenschlaeger has focused attention on adult education on the national, regional, and international levels. In March 2023, Gartenschlaeger became director and chief executive of DVV International, an institute of the German Adult Education Association, but his contributions to the field as both practitioner and policymaker have enriched the lives of trainers and students across Europe, Asia, and Russia for decades.

Gartenschlaeger joined DVV, the largest organization for adult education in Europe, in 1995. Within the organization, he served as country director for Russia, regional director for Central Asia and Southeast Asia, and project manager for East-Central Europe. He became deputy director in 2019. Through his work for DVV, Gartenschlaeger has played a significant role in restructuring adult education systems in partner countries and has been instrumental in policy creation.

Anke Grotlüschen. Grotlüschen is a widely cited and internationally recognized researcher known for her scholarship on adult education and literacy. Her trailblazing research on literacy is respected among policymakers and researchers alike with findings that contradict common stereotypes about how low-literate adults function in society.

Her work as Professor for Lifelong Learning at Hamburg University occupies a unique intersection between practice and pure research. Her primary goal has been to provide the evidence for more funding and the institutionalization of more than 25 basic education centers within Germany, while focusing on the areas of greatest need. In all of her work, she has focused

on the ways that adult education can be emancipatory and not exclusively centered on improving work opportunities.

Kimberly D. Osborne. Osborne has significantly shaped how people use information and power to inform and influence others, make sense of the world, and negotiate their place in it. Her leadership has been especially impactful at the intersection of mass communication as a means of informal and incidental education and strategic program planning. Her scholarship and practice inform how power relations and interests shape outcomes, and she has been consulted worldwide in leadership development and change management.

From January 2013 to April 2014, she served as the chief strategic communication adviser to the Afghan National Security Forces at the end of Operation Enduring Freedom, the longest NATO mission in history. Osborne led a multinational team of senior advisers and was assigned to “fix” the “broken” communication function in the Afghan National Army. Using research and training in adult education, she conducted an organizational analysis and presented a remediation plan to the Afghan Minister of Defense, resulting in unanimous approval and orders to implement her recommendations. For her achievements, she received numerous awards and medals from the U.S. Department of Defense, NATO, and the government of Afghanistan.

John Parker. Parker is perhaps best known as the founder and first director of the University of Missouri's Lifespan Learning Program, the learning in retirement program now known as the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at MU. As a retired volunteer, Parker led efforts to offer regularly scheduled, noncredit short courses and lectures in academic settings, taught by retired professors from MU and Columbia College and experts in the community. This not only gave many residents a deeper sense of affiliation with the academic community, but also fundamentally transformed how continuing education for the senior population is offered.

While serving as a continuing education specialist for MU's extension program, he developed and implemented noncredit short courses and lectures around the state for adult learners on a variety of topics, including creative writing, understanding and using the internet, Latin American history, the basics of electricity around the home, horticulture, the Lewis and Clark Expedition, basic photography, the legal aspects of journalism, and dozens of others.

William J. Rothwell. Rothwell’s successful career in adult education, primarily in the advancement of training and development, spans more than three decades. Before becoming a faculty member at Pennsylvania State University in 1993, he logged nearly twenty years of experience in government and the private sector. His professional and research background has allowed him to bridge academic discourse in workforce education with industry best practices to teach and research complex issues, significantly contributing to workplace learning, succession planning, and talent management.

As an engaged scholar and researcher, Rothwell’s primary passion is developing future scholars and leaders. He has conducted multiple studies in workforce development and has contributed significantly to the literature of the field. His publications include many books, book chapters, and more than 150 articles, as well as numerous national and international presentations on professional management, organization development, succession planning, and human resource development. Rothwell continues to support and mentor students who graduated more than thirty years ago, modeling his belief that developing individuals goes beyond mere education.

Each individual inductee is awarded a plaque and a medal to recognize their membership in the Hall. A copy of each plaque hangs in the hallways of the University of Oklahoma’s College of Continuing Education, Thurman J. White Forum Building, in Norman, Oklahoma.

Organization Award

Beginning in 2021, the Hall established a new category for organizations that make distinguished contributions to and significantly impact the field of adult and continuing education. The first organization inducted was AONTAS, the Irish National Adult Learning Organization.

At the 2023 induction ceremony, the International Council for Adult Education (ICAE) received the award for 50 years of advocacy on behalf of adult learners internationally. The ICAE was founded in Toronto in 1973 and remains the only global civil society organization for adult education and lifelong learning today. With its vision of education as a human right for all people, ICAE brings together members from sixty countries across seven world regions. Together they strive to promote learning and education for adults and young people in pursuit of social justice within the framework of human rights, to secure the healthy, sustainable, and democratic development of individuals, communities, and societies. Accepting the award on behalf of the ICAE was Dr. Katarina Popovic, Secretary General.

The current Chair of the Hall’s Board of Directors is Dr. Éva Farkas, Associate Professor, University of Szeged, Hungary. The Executive Director of the Hall is Dr. James P. Pappas, retired from the University of Oklahoma.

References