U.Va. Provides Excellent Educational Opportunities for Adult Learners
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Adults who want to begin working toward a college degree or continue their earlier studies have a strong ally in the School of Continuing and Professional Studies at the University of Virginia.
Founded in 1915, the school has gone through several name changes and mission reevaluations, but its core goal remains the same. More than 15,000 students receive undergraduate and graduate degrees from SCPS annually, as well as certificates and professional licensing. With students from all walks of life, including school districts and government agencies, the school touches almost every aspect of the adult-learning community. And in recent years, a variety of efforts have seen accelerated growth on many fronts.
“One of the things that first struck me when I came here was how closely SCPS is linked to the primary academic missions of the university and the different schools and colleges within it,” says Lynda Phillips-Madson, interim dean, who joined SCPS in 2001. “They are all doing important and excellent work, but we’re able to work very closely with the college of arts, science, engineering, education and others to not only help support and deliver their degree programs but also concurrently build our own credit-bearing programs.”
Those collaborative efforts allow SCPS and the university as a whole to identify marketplace trends early on, so that if a particular industry is in need of workers, the programs are well along in development, or even in place, to meet those needs.
“We can work over time with other academic units to deliver programs,” Phillips-Madson says. “If there’s a shortage of nurses, we can deliver more nursing programs. The same goes if there’s a shortage of engineers or many other professions. We’re able to tie into both the economic development needs of the state and beyond.”
SCPS and U.Va. faculty members also work together on a variety of projects at any given time, targeting trends and creating new programs that may not meet a need that is immediately pressing, but will prove beneficial down the road. This allows SCPS to upgrade its outreach efforts to the community by constantly enhancing its curriculum and degree offerings.
“We play a very important role as an outreach arm of U.Va.,” Phillips-Madson says. “And as such, we have a very strong and positive future. We depend on the state for funding, so when budgets are cut we have to do more with less, but we’re maintaining our programs and building future opportunities for study. And along with those new programs we’re always monitoring our existing programs to see if they’re fulfilling a need, so that we can discontinue those that are using resources that might be better utilized by something new. It’s a fairly continuous reallocation of resources, and it gives us a very bright future.”
Story by Joe Morris
Photo by Ian Curcio
