The Cheshire Academy for Lifelong Learning (CALL) program at Keene State is on hold for the fall semester; however, a “new CALL” awaits the college.
“Provost Kirsti Sandy asked me to chair this advisory group… She has asked us to send her our report by early December that recommends an updated model for the program, one that is financially stable, one that connects with our mission,” Assistant Vice President of Academic Engagement Celia Rabinowitz said.
According to the Keene State website, “CALL is an educational program aimed at seniors and/or retired folks… Classes are offered for eight weeks in the fall and eight weeks in the spring, with a four-week “mini-session” offered in January and February.”
According to Rabinowitz, the new committee includes herself, a member of the community who has been a part of the CALL program, someone who has taught CALL classes and a staff member from campus who has taken CALL classes.
Rabinowitz said the committee is trying to find a new model that “sustains a life-long learning that really enhances the college’s relationship with the community the way the CALL program has done.”
The CALL program was halted soon after former KSC Educational Program Coordinator Heather Jasmin accepted her new position as the director of Keene Community Education.
“[Now] I work with students who are looking for alternative pathways to finish high school,” Jasmin said. “I’m talking to so many interesting people and so many interesting stories.”
Jasmin said the CALL program is in its 30th year, 19 of those years being under her. Due to her long history with the program, she believed it was better for the KSC Continuing Education office to halt CALL.
“I knew we didn’t have a lot of resiliency in our office, there weren’t a lot of people that already knew the players and already knew the software that we use to register and things like that,” Jasmin said. “It would have been hard for them to have pulled off without the base knowledge.”
Sandy agreed pausing the program would do the CALL members justice more than continuing with a loose plan.
“The decision was we did not want to run this program because that would really alienate people that we respect so much, which is the people who have been coming here for CALL all these years,” Sandy said. “I think to do it poorly would be worse than to put a pause on it and think about how we could continue to do it well.”
Sandy said the committee will focus on figuring out whether the college will benefit more from seeing CALL go in a different direction and discussing options with members of the program and comparing the responses to researched data on the program.
According to Rabinowitz, the data specifically includes data on enrollment in the classes that have been offered in the CALL program as well as budget and expenditures.
“We’ll reach out to the people who are on the CALL email list which is a large group,” Rabinowitz said. “We will reach out to Keene State faculty and staff separately as a group …. Instead of picking out particular people to talk to, we just do really broad outreach and we give the people who are interested an opportunity to answer some questions that we’ll develop about why the program is important to them.”
Nicole Dumont can be contacted at
ndumont@kscequinox.com
