An Appreciation of Art Cohen From the Perspective of a Practitioner and Former Graduate Student

Abstract

When I enrolled in the graduate school of education at UCLA in fall 1969, I had not heard of Arthur Cohen. I was inclined to focus my studies on the more traditional college and university institutions in which, up to that time, I had studied, taught, and worked in student personnel. I had not been a community college student and was not very familiar with the mission and practices of those institutions. However, philosophically I was attracted to the concept of community colleges, especially the emphasis on access, and I believed in the need for reform of higher education teaching, curriculum, and organization. It did not take me long to be drawn to Art Cohen's teaching about, research on, and passion for community colleges. Little did I know then that I would spend my entire professional life working in community colleges, applying many of the ideas and concepts I learned from him in graduate school. This was the late 1960s, and university campuses reflected the turmoil of the country over the Vietnam War and the demands of students for more relevant and education. It was the time of the creation of the Open University in England and the introduction of many innovations in teaching and organization of institutions. In 1969, Art Cohen's book Dateline '79: Heretical Concepts for the Community College was published, and it expressed many of the ideas that would inspire my work for the next 25 years. His description of what the community college of 1979 should look like was prophetic, not necessarily in the sense that all the features were enacted but rather that the ideas have become some of the most significant and ongoing issues of the community college movement since then. His ideal college was characterized by easy access, accountability, courses that take students to all parts of the city, teachers as professionals in instruction, research on learning processes (p. 208). After I completed my doctorate, the first feature of Art's ideal community college, the need for easier access, took me to work at the Coast Community College District in Southern California, where my first position was instructional designer for television courses. The district had just acquired the license for a public broadcasting station and the chancellor, Dr. Norman Watson, was committed to the idea of using television for education. Coast, along with Miami Dade Community College, the Dallas County Community College District, and other colleges, were exploring how public 2-year institutions could lead the open education movement. It was an exciting opportunity to be a part of the creation of high-quality educational television, utilizing principles of design, the power of television, and the opportunity to reach a whole new audience of students, especially adult part-time students. The work on telecourses employed another element of Art Cohen's educational philosophy, the commitment to use objectives in instruction. From the beginning, Coast's telecourses were distinguished by a commitment to solid academic quality and were organized around course goals and specific objectives developed by faculty that formed the basis for the course print and video components, as well as the evaluation instruments. …