In today's Santa Barbara News-Press, page A4!
Please join CLL for our free Grand Opening Celebration event this Saturday, August 24th!
SBCC opens registration for new adult ed : Center for Lifelong Learning to give away $1,000 in financial aid Saturday
August 21, 2013 8:02 AM
It's not "continuing education," it's "lifelong learning."
Registration opened Monday for the inaugural term of Santa Barbara City College's Center for Lifelong Learning, which is offering more than 500 classes this fall in five broad categories: arts, crafts, performance; body, mind, spirit; business, finance, work; events, film, words; and home, nature, technical.
"We're very excited about this new beginning," said Andrew Harper, executive director of the Center for Lifelong Learning.
"We're very proud of what we have in this center," echoed Terri Cooper, a marriage and family therapist who teaches psychology courses. "We're delighted at the opportunity to reinvent ourselves and expand."
Unlike SBCC offerings of years past, the center's classes will be funded by student fees, not state money, but Ms. Cooper said that the switch comes with an upside.
"It's incredibly liberating for us teachers," said Ms. Cooper, explaining that state-funded courses were subject to certain requirements and a level of "academic rigidity" from which fee-supported classes will be free.
The classes will still be intellectually worthwhile, she said, but instructors are now free to expand their offerings.
This coming term, Ms. Cooper will be teaching four classes, including a self-hypnosis course and a past-life regression workshop.
"All of my classes are experiential," Ms. Cooper said.
In the past-life regression workshop, for instance, Ms. Cooper will spend an hour teaching the history of reincarnation before delving into guided meditation and past life readings.
Don't expect her to tell you that you are Joan of Arc or JFK reincarnated, however.
"I've never met anybody who was actually famous (in a past life)," said Ms. Cooper, going on to say that her readings emphasize relating past-life experiences to present situations, contextualizing a person's pains, predilections and phobias.
Ms. Cooper expressed excitement that the center would allow her to teach holistic psychology and Eastern spirituality in ways she had not been able to under the state-funding model.
The center's representatives acknowledged the public discontent of the past few years over the switch from free to paid adult education course offerings, which was forced because the state no longer funds noncredit courses.
"Santa Barbara City College has a rich and highly valued tradition of offering state-funded noncredit lifelong learning courses for free to our community," notes Jack Friedlander, executive vice president of SBCC Educational Programs, in the Center for Lifelong Learning's fall 2013 course catalogue.
"The creation of this new venture is in response to dramatic changes in the state's funding of community college courses."
Mr. Friedlander and Mr. Harper both said the state has prioritized workforce training over lifelong learning, and that the switch to fee-supported offerings better serves the Santa Barbara community.
"I think a lot of the initial confusion and angst has been worked out," said Mr. Harper, acknowledging area residents' reticence to pay for classes but maintaining that the community is warming to the fees. Mr. Harper noted that the center's fees, about $5 per class hour, are around half the national average for similar community college classes.
"We're very aware that for a lot of people the fees could be a real hardship," Mr. Harper added, plugging the center's tuition-assistance program.
Funded solely by donations, the Center's tuition assistance is need-based. Mr. Harper said that the center already has more than $25,000 in the tuition assistance fund, and hopes to disburse around $10,000 each term.
Mr. Harper encouraged those seeking tuition assistance to apply two months before the start of each term. Applications can be found on-campus or through www.sbcc.edu/cll.
Students also can snag tuition assistance at the center's grand opening Saturday. Mr. Harper said the center will give away $1,000 in tuition assistance at the event, with drawings scheduled for 1:30 and 3:15 p.m.
The grand opening will be held from 1 to 3:30 p.m. at the SBCC Wake Campus, 300 N. Turnpike Road. The event will feature 30 of the center's teachers demonstrating their class offerings, from dancing to ceramics to songwriting, as well as free coffee and McConnell's ice cream.
Overall, the center will combine the best of old and new, "honoring the legacy" of adult education in Santa Barbara but "excited about the future," Mr. Harper said.
The center aims to keep things fresh by replacing 20 percent of its course offerings each term with new classes, and instructors will be paid on a revenue-sharing basis, ensuring that the most in-demand classes best compensate those who teach them.
The Center for Lifelong Learning's fall 2013 term will begin Sept. 9.
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