The Continuing Education department shut down the Continuing Studies program at the end of last semester due to dropping enrollment, said Jodi Devine, associate director for executive education and adult programs.
The program offered not-for-credit evening courses to adults in the community for five years, Devine said. But the program experienced a decrease in enrollment over the last few semesters, including a 46 percent drop in fall course enrollment from 2011 to 2012 and a 40 percent drop over the same period in the spring courses, Devine said.
“The program was no longer sustainable and that was the driving force behind the closing,” she said.
Last fall, the department formed a committee to examine the program and consider the possibility of its closure, Devine said. The program officially ended at the close of the semester.
“This was not a decision we made lightly,” Devine said. She added that the department would look into reopening the program if interest rose again in the future.
Sarah Baldwin-Beneich, communications director at the Watson Institute for International Studies, is a former student and instructor in the Continuing Studies program. She said she had a great experience with the program and is upset to see it closing.
“What I saw, as a student and as an instructor, was a great, vibrant evening classroom of people who had lives and wanted to inject some extra learning into those working lives,” she said. “It’s a sad thing that programs like this are not sustainable.”
The students in her classes were a mix of Brown employees and working and retired people from all over Rhode Island, Baldwin-Beneich said. She added that some of her former students have contacted her, also disappointed by the closing of the program.
The program is not being replaced, but the Continuing Education department is scheduling many speakers and events that will be open to community members, Devine said.
Baldwin-Beneich said she believes former students of the Continuing Studies program will attend these events, though they will be very different from the program’s classroom environment.
“It certainly doesn’t fulfill the same need, which is a much more interactive and personally challenging need,” she said. “But I think the public that was liable to sign up for classes will be a very important constituency for the lectures.”
ADVERTISEMENT
