Innovation in Outreach and Extension: Some Thoughts on the Next Wave

The last decade has been a time of significant innovation in university extension and outreach.  At the same time, higher education in general has been under increasing criticism for focusing on narrow professional programs and losing its social mission.  Much innovation has been driven by technology—putting existing curricula online to serve adult and part-time learners, especially.  As we look ahead, we need to ask how we can use both traditional means and online technology to address the many problems facing our communities in a new social and economic environment.  Here are four areas where I think we are ripe for innovation in Extension and Outreach:

1.            Partnering with K-12 Education It is generally understood that, if our communities are to compete in the new global information economy, we need a better-educated workforce.  More high school graduates need to go on to college.  The Obama Administration proposal to make community college free to qualified students is an example of this goal.  The U.S. Department of Education target is that 60% of high school grads will go on to college; only about 39% do now.  The problem is that most high school graduates who are prepared to enter college already do so.  In order to increase the percentage, we need to increase the number of high school students who are, in fact, prepared to succeed in college.   Two innovations could set the stage for new, ongoing relationships between higher and K-12 education:

·      Dual Enrollment Courses  Universities can partner with local schools to allow high school students to enter lower-division college courses and simultaneously earn high school graduation credit and college credit.  The result is students who are more ready to enter college and who do so with some credits already on their resumes.

·      Open Educational Resources  Universities that offer online courses can extract online content modules from courses and make them available to help high school teachers enrich college prep courses.   There is a model for this—the relationships among public television stations, local schools, and state departments of education that delivered content over the air to schools from the 1960s through the 1980s.

2.            Re-Imagining Extension  Originally, Agricultural Extension was created to increase agricultural production, so that the U.S. could sustain the combined forces of urbanization and immigration that fed the Industrial Revolution.  Today, we are facing different challenges.  As the 21^st century advances, we will need to help farmers deal with a range of agricultural issues—this time in the face of dramatic climate change—but we also need to expand the Extension ideal to help our communities, large and small, deal with the economic and social issues presented by the Information Revolution.  How can we help communities maintain their social and economic validity in the face of a globalized economy?  In an era of social media, how do we rebuild the physical community—our towns and villages, as well as our cities—into socially and economically viable places to live, raise families, conduct business, and exercise citizenship?  Online technology can play a role here, too, by bringing community leaders together to share ideas and best practices and to learn from faculty researchers, building new ways to transfer research and technology into daily practice in business, government, and civil society.

3.            Globalizing the Discussion  Over the past few generations, institutions have tended to see international outreach as a one-way street—a way to export our faculty expertise, our research and technology, and our credentials.  Today, we need to seek out more evenly balanced institutional partnerships that bring faculty together across cultures, eco-systems, and economies to share ideas, to find common solutions, and to inform each other—and our students—about new perspectives in our globalized society.  The Worldwide Universities Network is a pioneer in this arena and a model that other institutions can follow.  Another early innovation is the partnerships between institutions to offer “sandwich” doctorates that reduce brain drain from developing countries while developing new collaborative research opportunities.   A fundamental challenge in this area is to help our constituencies better understand the global environment by allowing them to interact with counterparts around the world as students, as outreach/extension clients, and as research transfer partners.

4.            Preparing Retirees for the Third Act  In today’s world, people live longer, more healthy and active lives.  For many, retirement is no longer the end of active life, but the beginning of a “third act,” when men and women can look beyond the need to support their families and find new interests.  Helping the first few generations of these new seniors find a place in society—whether it be in new professions or as volunteers or just active individuals—is a new way that outreach and extension units can bring university knowledge and expertise to bear to serve individuals and, in the process, strengthen communities.  Older adults are a new and growing population who need access to university resources no less than they did as young professionals.  And, our communities need older adults who are prepared to contribute in new ways.

            These innovations are not technological per se, but they are facilitated by technology.  The demonstrate how public higher education can re-imagine the roots of its outreach/extension mission in the process of re-focusing on the needs of today’s community. 

           

Corporate Greed and the "Social Mortgage"

Several articles over the past couple of days have cast a fresh light on what appears to be a deep and abiding problem in American society:  the rise of a particularly rapacious new oligarchy.

            Donald Trump was the focus of one article, based on his recent diatribe against immigrants.  Robert Reich noted on Facebook 

 “ . . . Trump has used bankruptcy and corporate laws to shield his personal fortune, allowing him to amass huge debts with little or no downside risk while enjoying all the upside gains.  Trump also made his fortune by squeezing employees . . . He typifies the modern corporate CEO who’s rigged the rules, reaped giant personal rewards, and left communities and employees stranded.” 

            This tension between corporate profit and social responsibility was reinforced by another article this week.  This one focused on the decision by the CVS pharmacy chain to withdraw membership in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has been lobbying on behalf of the tobacco industry.  As The New York Times reported, “CVS, which last year stopped selling tobacco products in its stores, said the lobbying activity ran counter to its mission to improve public health.”   The report went on to say:

The New York Times reported last week that the chamber and its vast network of foreign affiliates had targeted restrictions, often in developing countries, on smoking in public spaces, bans on menthol and slim cigarettes, advertising restrictions, excise tax increases, plain packaging and graphic warning labels. The chamber’s efforts have put it in direct opposition to the World Health Organization’s efforts to curb tobacco use around the world.

            The Times noted that the chamber’s stated purpose was “safeguarding its members business interests” and cited a Chamber of Commerce statement that “ . . . we support protecting the intellectual property and trademarks of all legal products in all industries and oppose singling out certain industries for discriminatory treatment.”  In fact, it has mounted, in collaboration with overseas affiliates, a lobbying campaign against restrictions on smoking in public places and related laws designed to curb tobacco use.

            These two examples reinforce the idea that unregulated, free-market capitalism is concerned first and foremost—solely, in many cases—with profit, even when that conflicts with the social good.  Corporate greed has become an end in itself.  Too often, the idea of corporate social responsibility is simply a pretense, part of the company’s sales job but not a reality in the boardroom.  (CVS, with its decision not to sell tobacco products, is a good exception to this rule.)  The ideal of unrestricted profit leaves no room for social responsibility.  Pope Francis addressed the issue of corporate greed during his South American tour this week—the third article I read that brought the first two together. "The goods of the Earth are meant for everyone," the Pope said, "and however much someone may parade his property, it has a social mortgage." 

            The issue has become increasingly important over the past few decades, as the federal government has begun to “outsource” its responsibilities to private firms rather than create government structures to meet needs.  Perhaps the worst example was the outsourcing of military support to private companies during the Iraq war and, more recently, the outsourcing of our support for NASA to private companies, which just recently failed to launch a supply ship to the international space station.  The conflict between private gain and social good underpins the debate over the Affordable Care Act.  In the education arena, we’ve seen some for-profit companies that offer online degrees be great at attracting students with federal financial aid, but miserable at actually seeing these students through to completion.  The result is that they turn our tax dollars into corporate profit but don’t deliver the education.  That’s the “social mortgage” that any university—public, private or for-profit—must pay.

Time to Stop the Violence

The racially motivated massacre this week at the Emmanuel AME church in Charleston, South Carolina, is yet another low point in American society.  We've had multiple massacres over the past few years--at schools, at theaters, at shopping malls, and now, in churches.  In every case, the media have given it a lot of air time, but have soon let it--and the underlying issues, especially gun control--drop in favor of fresher meat.  In this case, however, the massacre has come on the heels of several other examples of racial violence--usually violence by police against African-Americans.   Perhaps, these events, taken together, will give our elected officials reason to rise above the narrow interests of their funders.  I am a hopeless optimist.

Clearly, we cannot erase racism in a single swipe.  This year marks the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War, which ended official slavery of African-Americans.  This week marks the 51st anniversary of the Senate approval of the Civil Rights Bill, which set the stage for a generation of healing.  The election of our first African-American President should have been another visible step toward a post-racist society, but instead we have seen racism creep back into our daily headlines.

We need to act, though.  Here are a few small steps that might help reduce violence, if not racism itself:

1.   Implement a national gun registration system.  For decades, we have required any person who drives a car to be licensed to do so, and we have required that all cars be registered by their owners.    Let's do the same for guns:  (a) all gun owners must be licensed to use a gun, with the license to be renewed annually, and (b) all guns must be registered by their owners, with that registration to be renewed annually.  This is not a threat to our Constitutional right to bear arms any more than car registration and driver licensing is a threat to our freedom to travel.  However, it would provide a modicum of protection for all citizens.

2.  One reason that citizens' voices are not heard in the debate over gun control is that the gun manufacturers have put so much money into the political process.  Let's stop corporate funding of our elections and instead use public funding to ensure that all candidates have equal access to the election process.

3.  150 years after the end of the Civil War, let us, finally, stop the official use of the flag of the confederacy in state houses. 

Americans cannot simply shrug and walk away from these recurring tragedies.  We cannot simply accept the notion that the price of democracy is senseless violence.  We are better than this.  Or, at least, we can be better than this.

New Edition of E-Learning Definitions

For the past few years, Frank Mayadas and I have worked to refine a set of definitions within the online learning field.  This year, John Sener joined the team, and we have come up with a new edition of the definitions.  John, Frank, and Karen Pederson of OLC will have a session about definitions at the fall OLC conference.  Meanwhile, here is the latest version:

Definitions of E-Learning Courses and Programs

Version 2.0

April 4, 2015

Developed for Discussion within the Online Learning Community

By

Frank Mayadas, Gary Miller, and John Sener

As e-learning has evolved into a global change agent in higher education, it has become more diverse in its form and applications.  This increased diversity has complicated our ability to share research findings and best practices, because we lack a shared set of definitions to distinguish among the many variations on e-learning that have arisen.  This paper is designed to provide practitioners, researchers, and policy makers with a common set of terms and definitions to guide the ongoing development of the field.  Our hope is that it will move us toward a set of shared, commonly understood definitions that will facilitate the sharing of research data and professional standards in our field.  In developing the definitions below, we have tried to incorporate existing definitions developed by others and have incorporated comments from colleagues who have reviewed earlier drafts.   We do not present these as the ultimate definitions, but as a step toward more commonly held standards as our field continues to evolve.  Additions and revisions will be published periodically, as needed.

The Impact of E-Learning

While e-learning has become the primary form of distance education, it is also transforming instruction on campus.  Higher education historically is a campus-based institution.  Many students live on campus for the duration of their studies; others live near campus and commute to campus to take classes and to receive campus-based support services.  This physical connection has defined the relationship between the student and the institution.  It has also helped to shape the curriculum itself.  E-learning has blurred these traditional relationships, removing geography as a defining element in the student-institution relationship.  

Technology-enhanced learning has evolved both from enhancements to earlier generations of face-to-face teaching and enhancements to earlier generations of distance education.  Engaged intentional design of learning experiences has also evolved to promote the most effective design to serve the learners, their life experiences and the opportunities and limitations of the particular environment.  For example, many graduate programs have deliberately designed programs for working adults, which are predominantly offered online but also include short-term face-to-face residencies.

At the same time, it is becoming increasingly difficult to define a common measure for instruction.  The “seat time” measure on which common understanding of a “credit hour” is largely based, is being challenged as new instructional models and alternatives to traditional classroom lectures become more widely accepted.  However, the credit hour remains the most widely accepted measure used to compare courses across different delivery environments.  Continued growth in the number and diversity of learning environments will increase the need for a common standard by which different learning environments can be compared.  The following definitions assume the credit hour as the primary means by which courses are defined, regardless of delivery environment.

As e-learning has matured, it has begun to be used in different ways to address diverse goals.  Several models have emerged that have different geographical and curricular implications.  It is important to be able to distinguish among these factors in order to compare practices and to understand and be able to effectively apply research findings.  Shared definitions will also empower students to make better decisions.  The major goals of e-learning include:  improving access for both traditional-age and nontraditional students who are not otherwise able to attend a traditional, campus-based program and improving student choice over when, where, and how to engage in the learning process; and improving efficiency and effectiveness by using e-learning media and methods to control cost or provide other efficiencies or to make large-enrollment courses more effective for students.  In addition, we are assuming that courses and programs defined below are instructor-led experiences, distinguishing them from self-learning modules, often seen for instance in some corporate training models.

DEFINITIONS OF E-LEARNING

Over the years, various organizations have attempted to define different aspects of e-learning.  Often, these have been focused on the specific needs of an individual institution or organization.  In 2012, Frank Mayadas and Gary Miller posted a set of definitions designed to create a more common understanding; these were updated later that year in response to feedback from the professional e-learning community.  The following definitions are designed to replace the 2012 document.  They are designed to help both faculty and students better understand the different kinds of e-learning that are now practiced in higher education and to provide institutions with some standard models to encourage effective sharing of data about e-learning, at both the individual course and the curriculum level.  These definitions have two key characteristics:

·      They include definitions at both the course level and the program level.

·      They incorporate three key parameters:  instructional delivery mode, time, and flexibility.

COURSE-LEVEL DEFINITIONS

The following definitions distill current practices into seven categories that reflect the variety of applications that predominate in use today.

1.            Classroom Course – Course activity is organized around scheduled class             meetings.

Traditional classroom courses are measured by the number of hours spent in required in-person class meetings in various formats, such as lectures, studios, or workshops or other traditional face-to-face activities, such as laboratories, field trips, or internships.  Such courses may involve some sort of computer usage—for example, a software simulation or laboratory or design software for art or engineering applications—but the course is still anchored to the normal time spent in face-to-face classes.  For the purposes of clarity in these definitions, courses that use technology at this level are considered to be “classroom” courses.

2.            Synchronous Distributed Course—Web-based technologies are used to extend             classroom lectures and other activities to students at remote sites in real time.

These courses use web conferencing or other synchronous e-learning media to provide access to a classroom experience for students at off-campus locations (such as places of employment, other campuses, etc.) while otherwise maintaining a normal face-to-face classroom schedule.  These courses may mix on-campus and remote students, with on-campus students being face-to-face with their instructor and remote students participating simultaneously via technology.  This changes the experience for both sets of students, so both settings fall into the same category.  Some types of synchronous distributed courses offer greater place flexibility than others, depending on the delivery tool used.  Synchronous distributed courses are significantly limited in terms of time flexibility, although that can be increased by recording class lectures and related activities and making them available for later viewing.

3.            Web-Enhanced Course – Online course activity complements class sessions             without reducing the number of required class meetings.

When Internet access is required to complete course requirements, and when this Internet-based work augments classroom activity or supplants a relatively small amount (typically, 20 percent or less) of the traditional classroom activity, the course is considered a “web-enhanced course.”  Traditional courses and web-enhanced courses are very similar, but are placed in separate categories because web-enhanced courses require additional faculty and student support, and very likely additional technology.  Web-enhanced courses are not normally considered to be e-learning courses, but are described here because they may be a step toward a hybrid or online course.

4.            Blended (also called Hybrid) Classroom Course – Online activity is mixed             with classroom meetings, replacing a significant percentage, but not all             required face-to-face instructional activities.

When the technologies used for education and communication outside the classroom are used to supplant some, but not all face-to-face instruction, reducing the time actually spent in the classroom, the result is a blended classroom course.  For example, if a course traditionally meets in a classroom three times per week, a blended version might use online sessions to replace one or two of the traditional weekly classroom sessions or to focus face-to-face sessions on laboratory or project work.  The offering institution should set the threshold for required online activity at that institution.  Some institutions use blended courses with traditional on-campus students to improve efficiency in the use of limited classrooms.  For example, replacing 50% of classroom experiences with online experiences would allow an institution to schedule a second course in the same room. 

5.            Blended (also called Hybrid) Online Course – Most course activity is done online, but there are some required face-to-face instructional activities, such as lectures, discussions, labs, or other in-person learning activities.

These courses are the mirror image of blended classroom courses.  Most course activity is conducted online, but a small amount of scheduled in-person classroom or other onsite group activities events are required.  Online delivery replaces all but a few required face-to-face sessions.  While this category of course may commonly be called an “online” course, the distinction is important because the inclusion of face-to-face work sets some geographic limitations on student access to the course.   The institution is responsible for setting the threshold of required online activity.

Both Blended Classroom Courses and Blended Online Courses are particularly relevant in programs that serve students within commuting distance of campus.  They increase flexibility but do not totally eliminate the need for students to have physical access to a campus facility.  Blended courses will be attractive to many traditional full-time students, in addition to non-traditional learners, typically working adults who are within commuting distance and who wish to earn a degree.

6.            Online Course – All course activity is done online; there are no required             face-to-face sessions within the course and no requirements for on-campus             activity.

Purely online courses totally eliminate geography as a factor in the relationship between the student and the institution. They consist entirely of online elements that facilitate the three critical student interactions: with content, the instructor, and other students.

While these courses may appeal to on-campus students, they are designed to meet the needs of students who do not have effective access to campus.  They may reside near the campus, or they may reside quite a distance away in other states or even in other countries.   Over the years, universities have sought to serve this “non-traditional” population through a variety of media—from correspondence courses to satellite teleconferences—but only since the mid-1990s has technology enabled easy and continuous communication—interaction—among the learners and instructors at a distance. The Internet also has made library and other information resources available to this group.  Improvements in basic technology also permit this user group access to complex data as in precision images, mathematical visualizations and simulations of various kinds.  Social networking applications allow these learners to participate in both formal and informal learning communities.

NOTE:  Since 2002-03, the Babson Survey Research Group has conducted a national survey of online learning, initially supported with funds from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.  It has become recognized as a premiere national e-learning survey research effort in the United States.  Their protocol defines a Blended/Hybrid course as being up to 79 percent online and an Online Course as being 80-100 percent online.  They have maintained that distinction in order to ensure longitudinal consistency across survey years.  However, most institutions now consider an online course to be 100% online.

7.            Flexible Mode Course – Offers multiple delivery modes so that students can             choose which delivery mode(s) to use for instructional and other learning             purposes.

The distinguishing characteristic of the type of course is that it provides students with the option to select from multiple delivery modes, which also increases their control over time and place as well as delivery mode. One example is the “Emporium” model developed through several innovations funded by the National Center for Academic Transformation (NCAT) (1). This model, designed for on-campus use, eliminates all class meetings and replaces them with a learning resource center featuring online materials and on-demand personalized assistance. This gives campus-based students control over when they study by allowing students to choose when they access course materials, to choose what types of learning materials they use depending on their needs, and to set their own pace in working with the materials.  It assumes that students have access to sophisticated instructional software and one-on-one on-site help.  It replaces formal class meetings with increased access to instructional assistance and allows institutions to combine multiple lecture sections into one large section.

The HyFlex blended learning model is another one in use at several colleges and universities. The model was developed at San Francisco State University to give students choice over the mode of study (2).   In HyFlex courses, students have both classroom-based and online options available for all or most learning activities, giving them the flexibility to choose when and where they study based on their own needs, desires, and preferences. Students can also choose to change which option they use to attend courses weekly.

PROGRAM-LEVEL DEFINITIONS

Similar distinctions among delivery environments can be made at the program level.  Degree and certificate programs can be designed with a mix of traditional and e-learning courses in order to serve populations who have different levels of access to campus.  Currently, there appear to be four major kinds of practices in wide use:

1.              Classroom Program—The program may include a mix of traditional, web-enhanced, or hybrid courses, but all courses require some face-to-face lecture sessions.

These programs take advantage of web-based applications to enhance learning, but without changing the requirement that students attend classes on campus or in other face-to-face learning environments.  As a result, online elements do not significantly improve access to commuting or distant students.

2.            Multi-Format Program – A program mixes classroom courses with other             formats that may use a variety of different delivery modes, web-enhanced,             blended, fully online courses, synchronous distributed courses, etc.,             without a specific access goal.

These programs use a variety of technologies and course designs to provide a variety of learning experiences.  Typically, choice of technology is less related to the geographic or time needs of students than to curricular goals or instructional needs.   

3.            Blended Program – A significant percentage, but not all of the credits             required for program completion are offered fully online.  Typically, up to 30             percent of the curriculum may be offered as face-to-face or blended             courses or other face-to-face formats or as independent study.

These programs provide increased access to distant students who are able to come to campus for some courses, laboratory work, intensive residencies, or other occasional group sessions.  Ideally, face-to-face sessions will be organized to minimize travel requirements for distant students.  Some academic support services should be available to distant students as well.  While a model in which 30 percent of the program consists of face-to-face or blended courses is given as a guideline, institutions should determine the percentage of the curriculum to be offered fully online based on local needs. 

4.            Online Program – All credits required to complete the program are offered             as fully online courses.  Students can complete the program completely at a             distance, with no required face-to-face meetings.

Fully online programs are designed with the truly distant student in mind.  Institutions that offer fully online programs should also take care to provide support services—registration, testing, advising, library support, etc.—at a distance.

Emerging Innovations

As e-learning matures, innovative new ways to teach and learn will continue to emerge.  Recent examples are massive open online courses (MOOCs) and competency-based education. At this stage in their evolution, these innovations can be adequately described within the course and program definitions described above;  MOOCs and competency-based courses can be understood as operating within one or more of the defined  categories. 

Implementation

The authors are indebted to the many colleagues too numerous to list individually who have contributed to these definitions by providing feedback on earlier drafts and who, in some cases, have pioneered in developing innovative applications of technology to create new learning environments.

These definitions are a work in progress that will be updated periodically as needed.   The authors welcome comments and anticipate that they will prepare occasional companion pieces to add new definitions as the field evolves, in the hope the community will come together around a common set of definitions that will guide research, practice, and policy.  We encourage researchers and professional associations to adopt the definitions with the goal that a shared vocabulary will facilitate the sharing of research data, increase the transfer of research into practice, and, ultimately, promote standards of excellence for the field.

Comments are welcome in this ongoing discussion.

References

(1) “The Emporium Model.”  National Center for Academic Transformation.  Retrieved from the Internet on February 16, 2015: http://www.thencat.org/PCR/model_emporium_all.htm

(2)  “Student Choice, Instrtuctor Flexibility: Moving Beyond the Blended Instructional Model.”  UAiR: Issues and Trends in Educational Technology,Vol. 1, No. 1. University of Arizona, 2013.  Retrieved from the Internet on February16, 2015: https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/itet/article/view/16464/16485

Version 1.0  8/2/2012

Version 1.1 9/7/12

Version 2.0 4/4/15

The Service Learning Year: A Proposal

            The question of how we create community in a time when technology has made physical location irrelevant is an important issue for us and will continue to be for the foreseeable future.  We are still in the very early stages of building a new society.  Right now, it seems, many younger people are being left behind.  They lack money.  Many lack a traditional family structure to guide them.  They lack a sense of membership—and thus a sense of both personal responsibility and control—in the broader civic community in which they live. They lack influence and access.  At the same time, individual citizens are losing power to larger corporations that exercise undo influence over our elected officials.  What do to?

            Here is a thought:  Institute a mandatory Year of Service Learning for every American, to begin 30 days after they graduate high school (or on their18th birthday if they are not enrolled in high school).   This would not be a military draft, although the military is one place a person might choose to do service.  Other venues might include:

·      Peace Corps and other federal service organizations

·      State and National Parks

·      Hospitals (janitorial and other duties, such as the old “candy striper” assignments)

·      Schools (janitorial and other duties)

·      Infrastructure (highway repair and maintenance of other state/national infrastructure)

·      Retirement homes and senior home care

·      Community-based volunteer organizations

·      Volunteer fire departments

·      Apprenticeships with key employers in the community

            In every case, the individual Service Learner would be required to work at least 20 hours a week, for which they would receive hourly wages.  In addition, service learners in a given community would meet together, with adult leadership, as part of a community-based service learning group to share their experiences.  They would also be encouraged to take at least two technical training courses or college courses (online or at a local college) during the year.  Costs for these courses would be paid as part of their compensation during the service learning year and could later be applied toward a certificate or degree. 

            Some costs could be funded by the organizations in which Service Learners work, including companies that offer apprenticeships.  Other costs—training and education—would be paid out of federal vocational and higher education scholarship funds.

            Ideally, the Service Learning Year would be seen as an extension of high school—a transitional experience for citizens as they learn about their role as adults in a community and, at the same time, begin to develop occupational and academic skills that will carry on into a more formal work or higher education experience.  Key elements are to develop occupational skills, but also to give young people the experience of being part of a working community before they go on to college or other pursuits.   The Obama administration has already proposed that the first year of community college education be free to qualified students.  This is a variation on that idea, but one that would be available to all young citizens as they turn 18 and that would provide, for some, a transition from school to work; for others, it would be an introduction to career options that they can move on to develop through higher education; and, for everyone, it would provide an introduction to adult membership in the community.

Rerum Novarum: Then and Now

In May 1891, Pope Leo XIII opened a new chapter in the mission of the Catholic Church when he issued an open letter entitled Rerum Novarum—Of New Things.  The letter dealt with the Church’s position on an issue of increasing global concern:  the dangers of unregulated Capitalism.   Much of the Western world was still in the throes of the Industrial Revolution.  Capitalism was in full flower, and other beliefs—the labor movement, Socialism, Communism—were developing in response to it.  The letter addressed the responsibilities of Capitalists to the larger community.

            Under the banner, “The Rights and Responsibilities of Capital and Labor,” the Pope noted:

. . . some opportune remedy must be found quickly for the misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class: for the ancient workingmen's guilds were abolished in the last century, and no other protective organization took their place. Public institutions and the laws set aside the ancient religion. Hence, by degrees it has come to pass that working men have been surrendered, isolated and helpless, to the hardheartedness of employers and the greed of unchecked competition. The mischief has been increased by rapacious usury, which, although more than once condemned by the Church, is nevertheless, under a different guise, but with like injustice, still practiced by covetous and grasping men. To this must be added that the hiring of labor and the conduct of trade are concentrated in the hands of comparatively few; so that a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself. 

            The Pope argued that the remedy proposed by the new Socialist movement—to renounce private property—was not ethical, as it “would rob the lawful possessor, distort the functions of the State, and create utter confusion in the community” and that “Socialists, therefore, by endeavoring to transfer the possessions of individuals to the community at large, strike at the interests of every wage-earner, since they would deprive him of the liberty of disposing of his wages, and thereby of all hope and possibility of increasing his resources and of bettering his condition in life.”

            Instead, the Pope called for a regulated approach to Capitalism that protected the worker and the Capitalist.  He wrote, “ . . . the first thing of all to secure is to save unfortunate working people from the cruelty of men of greed, who use human beings as mere instruments for money-making. It is neither just nor human so to grind men down with excessive labor as to stupefy their minds and wear out their bodies.”  He added, “ . . . wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner.  If through necessity or fear of a worse evil the workman accept harder conditions because an employer or contractor will afford him no better, he is made the victim of force and injustice.”  He argued that unions were a proper mechanism for ensuring that workers receive proper compensation and conditions for their work, comparing them to medieval guilds.

            One hundred and twenty-four years later, the Pope’s words continue to ring true.  The Information Revolution and the resulting globalization of capitalism have pretty much destroyed the ideal of community in many industries.  No longer do bosses and workers live in the same physical community, dependent one another for services outside the workplace.  At the same time, globalization—in the form of a global business supply chain—has diminished the impact of community on workers themselves.   In the process, greed becomes less tangible when the boss never even sees his workers and the workers have no relationship with their bosses outside work, not even a shared culture.

            For centuries, greed has been a “deadly sin” in the Christian community.  It was Christ, after all, who said that it is easier to put a camel through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven. The issue goes well beyond money.  It speaks to our respect for each other across social classes, for sure, but also across significant cultural divides in this new global economy.  What Pope Leo XIII did 124 years ago set a new direction for the Catholic Church at the height of the Industrial Revolution.  The question for today is whether we can re-invigorate the Rerum Novarum as both an individual morality and a societal ethic that will guide us through the dangerous waters in what has yet to take shape as a new social order.

AAUW Used Book Sale: A College Town Tradition

Yesterday marked the end of this year’s AAUW Book Sale, one of the great college town events in State College.   We went several times, buying books at each stop, including half-price day and three bags full on the last day-- Bag Day.   In the end, we refreshed our library with novels by Jorge Amado, Walter Mosley, James Lee Burke, and others, memoirs by Joan Baez,  Dan Rather and Alan Alda, short story collections, an early twentieth century collection of folk music from the Kentucky hills, and a cookbook, among other finds. 

            The AAUW sale has been a tradition in our family since our undergraduate days.  It was founded 54 years ago, initially operating out of a public meeting room in the Methodist church.  It moved to the Penn State HUB student union in the late 1960s and, eventually, took up residence in the new Agricultural Arena out by Beaver Stadium.  Today, it is one of the largest sales of its type on the East Coast, attracting 9,000 book buyers last year. 

            This year, State College residents donated 200,000 books for the sale.   There were tables of biographies, hardcover and paperback fiction, literature, social sciences, history, languages, children’s books, cookbooks, religion, humor, hobbies, travel, philosophy, science fiction, and at least four tables of mystery novels.  There was also a section for CD’s and DVD’s, a couple of tables for old collectibles and, in another room, a  group of rare books.  A student organization managed a food counter that included hot dogs (with and without sauerkraut), pastries, coffee and soft drinks and, a special treat, Penn State Creamery ice cream.   The event covered the entire Ag Arena floor.

            The four-day event was organized by the AAUW, which will soon start collecting books for the 2016 sale.  It is a year-long effort involving 250 volunteers who sort through donated books, organizing and pricing them, and then managing the sale itself.  The sale raises money to support scholarships for young women whose education has been interrupted but who want to return to school to finish their degrees.  It also supports a variety of national and local AAUW initiatives, including other local educational and library projects.

            We’ve never missed the sale since we discovered it around 1970.  Even when we moved to Maryland, we always came back for the AAUW Book Sale.  It is not only an opportunity to find some new books, but provides a chance to see old friends, discover new writers, and enjoy being part of a community.  I am always excited when I come across books from the libraries of faculty members with whom I studied as a student.  This year, for instance, I saw a copy of The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas with a note inside that English professor Thomas Rogers bought it in London in 1951. 

             AAUW groups in other college towns also organize annual book sales in their communities. Needless to say, we will be recycling some of our new finds by dropping them off at the AAUW book collection site in the coming months, helping to feed the sale for next year.  The sale is a great tradition that captures the true spirit of a university community.   I hope continues to thrive for many years to come.