Collection inventory

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Association for Continuing Higher Education (ACHE) Records

An inventory of its records at Syracuse University


The adult education holdings are collectively known as the
Alexander N. Charters Library of Resources for Educators of Adults.

Finding aid created by: -
Date: -

Biographical History

Originally founded in 1939 as the Association of University Evening Colleges (AUEC), the organization was renamed the Association for Continuing Higher Education (ACHE) in 1973. ACHE's membership and services encompass the entire spectrum of continuing higher education in the United States and internationally. Initially, as AUEC, it focused on the needs of administrators and faculty of evening colleges, on the assumption that quality evening college professionals lead to quality evening collegiate programs. Today, in addition to evening programs, ACHE services influence all types of continuing higher education activities. The Association membership is divided into eleven regions, each of which conduct one or more regional meetings each year, and ACHE as a whole sponsors a general annual meeting.

Scope and Contents of the Collection

The Association for Continuing Higher Education (ACHE) Records contains administrative and organizational files from the adult education organization. Of particular interest are the institutional membership files, which offer a unique window into the milieu of American evening colleges in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Annual meetings contains fliers, brochures, programs, and correspondence relating to ACHE's annual meetings. Board of directors contains lists of board members, minutes from board meetings, and board correspondence. Like most large organizations, ACHE had several dozen committees in existence at any given moment; this material is located in Committee files. Since committees began, ended, merged, separated, and sometimes changed their names at various times, there is some subject matter overlap amongst the files in this series. Regions contains material related to ACHE's separate regional chapters, most from the 1960s and 1970s with a subseries devoted to the 1989 regional conferences. Correspondence comprises general organizational correspondence covering nearly thirty years while Directories covers the same time period. Financial records comprises 35 years of financial reports.

Membership in ACHE was open to any evening college, but required an application and a site visit by ACHE representatives. These reports, formally written up and submitted by the site visit team to ACHE along with their recommendation, cover a range of topics -- enrollment size, course offerings, ratio of full-time to part-time faculty, whether or not evening students had their own student council and/or student publication, registration and commencement fees, and more. Institutional membership files contains applications and reports for more than one hundred evening colleges across the United States, and provides a unique snapshot of the state of evening college programs in the mid-1960s to early 1970s.

ACHE also formed Interassociational relationships with a number of other adult education organizations, including the Adult Education Association of the USA (AEA-USA), American Council on Education, Coalition of Adult Education Organizations (CAEO), Evening Student Personnel Association, International Council for Adult Education, and United States Association of Evening Students.

Publications contains material relating to ACHE's journal, Continuing Higher Education, other publications, and issues of various newsletters and news bulletins.

Miscellaneous includes background information on the organization (bylaws, constitution, statement of goals, handbook, logo development, membership survey, organizational profile), material relating to various miscellaneous topics (the 1967 Galaxy Conference, career education, the Canadian Association for University Continuing Education), and a notebook (disassembled and foldered) on the strategic planning retreat held in 1986.

Restrictions

Access Restrictions:

The majority of our archival and manuscript collections are housed offsite and require advanced notice for retrieval. Researchers are encouraged to contact us in advance concerning the collection material they wish to access for their research.

Use Restrictions:

Written permission must be obtained from SCRC and all relevant rights holders before publishing quotations, excerpts or images from any materials in this collection.

Related Material

The library holds a considerable number of collections related to adult and continuing education. Among them are the records of ACHE's predecessor organization, the Association for University Evening Colleges (AUEC), and the records of the Coalition of Adult Education Organization (CAEO). Please refer to the SCRC Subject Index for a complete listing of all adult education collections.

Subject Headings

Persons

Carroll, Frank C.
McGee, Howell

Corporate Bodies

Adult Education Association
Association for Continuing Higher Education (U.S.), Archives
Association of University Evening Colleges (U.S.)
Coalition of Adult Education Organizations
Evening Student Personnel Association

Subjects

Adult education

Genres and Forms

Applications.
Correspondence.
Minutes (administrative records)
Newsletters.

Occupations

Educators.

Administrative Information

Preferred Citation

Preferred citation for this material is as follows:

Association for Continuing Higher Education (ACHE) Records,
Special Collections Research Center,
Syracuse University Libraries

Acquisition Information

Gift of the Association for Continuing Higher Education (ACHE).

Table of Contents

Annual meetings

Board of directors

Committee files

Regions

Correspondence

Directories

Financial records

Institutional membership files

Interassociational relationships

Publications

Miscellaneous

Inventory