The growth and internal differentiation of Canadian universities over the last one hundred and fifty years have several explanations. Government policies on labour force development, demands from students or employers, popular beliefs in social or economic utility, charitable donations, or the intellectual evolution of academic fields have changed universities from their traditional status as liberal arts colleges for clergy or an educated élite. Canadian universities have become "multiversities," housing diverse faculties, departments, and programs of study. Although some new programs are responses to broad social currents that touch many institutions, others have a more idiosyncratic origin.¹ In the case of adult education at the University of British Columbia, one person, Coolie Verner, almost single-handedly built the department through shrewd exploitation of institutional and social circumstances.² Although virtually alone in his vision of a new academic department, he had the support of a handful of highly influential administrators. With their blessing, he courted allies, developed a curriculum, attracted students, and propounded an academic discipline. Verner thus was able to build one of the largest departments of its kind in Canada.

The University of British Columbia (UBC) in 1957 was the first Canadian university to offer a degree with an emphasis on adult education. This "first" was established by UBC administrators who thought that the program would attract those working as or aspiring to be "professional" adult educators. A growing number of Canadian educators were organizing, planning, or teaching educational programs for adults in a wide range of institutional settings including university extension departments, school boards, ministries of agriculture, private corporations, and recreation centres. Degrees in adult education were available at several American universities, and UBC administrators saw an opportunity to provide them in Canada. UBC's Director of Extension, John Friesen, was central to this influential network of administrators as were: President Norman MacKenzie; his Deputy, Geoffrey Andrew; the indefatigable Head of Physics and Dean of Graduate Studies, Gordon Shrum; and, after 1956, the first Dean of Education, Neville Scarfe. A pilot course in the summer of 1956 taught by Canadian Association of Adult Education (CAAE) Director Roby Kidd, "Administration of Adult Education Programs," suggested strong local interest. These several university men "and they were all men" were old friends who had played, and still played, significant roles in affairs of Canadian society and state. They had participated in the running of schools, national educational organizations, government information services, universities, research organizations, and Royal Commissions. They shared a belief in managed social change through public institutions, and now promoted applied social science research in universities. Their cooperation sealed a lengthy pattern of private endeavour, and launched a wider campaign to create a "professional community" of adult educators.³

The creation of the College (later Faculty) of Education at UBC provided the opportunity to launch several new graduate programs, all of which required resources from its Faculty. The adult education program needed personnel, money for salaries, physical space, a curriculum, students, and academic legitimacy. In short, it needed to establish and defend its claim as a unique area of teaching and research. For its first two years, the program consisted of only a single course taught during the winter session by Allan Thomas, MacKenzie's bright, young, and enthusiastic nephew who was also employed by the Department of Extension, and one or two courses taught by Thomas or a visitor during the summer session. In 1959-60, Coolie Verner of Florida State University joined UBC as a Visiting Professor of Adult Education to provide full-time instruction; the following year, Wilbur Hallenbeck, Professor of Adult Education at Columbia University did the same. Few took these courses, and fewer enrolled in the degree program (table 1).⁴ But despite modest offerings and demand, the program enjoyed substantial administrative support that promised an improved future.

Source: Write On: Adult Education Makes the Future (Vancouver: Adult Education Research Centre, 1985).

M.Ed.: Master of Education
M.A.: Master of Arts
M.S.A.: Master of Science in Agriculture
Ed.D.: Education Doctorate

Institutional Networking

When Verner arrived in 1959, the original network of founders and supporters was still intact. Invited by Friesen and especially Thomas, Verner immediately sought allies who might facilitate growth of the UBC program and justify the appointment of a professor of adult education.⁵ Some in Extension or in the School of Social Work may already have known Verner as a distant colleague, a tenured Associate Professor of Adult Education at Florida State University, a member of the CAAE, and a participant in the Commission of Professors of Adult Education.⁶ MacKenzie and Scarfe may also have known Verner through these associations, but the ties were distant at best. Verner spoke before Faculty of Education members, attended the Dean's Seminars, and met socially with full-professors Henry Johnson (Director of the Elementary Division), Ken Argue (frequent Director of Summer Session), Sadie Boyles (Assistant Director of Secondary Education), Ranton McIntosh (Director of Secondary Education), and Joseph Katz. Most significantly, Verner developed a friendship with Dean Neville Scarfe who was something of a benevolent dictator.⁷

Personal acquaintances were important to MacKenzie's UBC. Influential appointments were often made on the basis of personal association, and Education was no exception. F. Henry Johnson, for example, had been appointed by the provincial government to help launch the new Faculty, and was rewarded with his university position.⁸ In Extension, Friesen and Thomas had positions secured in part through MacKenzie's network. Gordon Shrum, MacKenzie's "chief expeditor" had approved Friesen's appointment, and Friesen in turn had supported Scarfe. Scarfe left a position as Dean of Education at the University of Manitoba and brought most of the Faculty with him to UBC.⁹ Networking was therefore an important way for Verner to secure a position at UBC, although few were oriented to adult education as he defined it. Many new education professors were former Normal School instructors, so Verner sought allies outside the Faculty as well.

Verner contacted the Faculty of Agriculture whose Dean, Blythe Eagles, was interested in whomever taught courses for its Master of Science in Agriculture (MSA) degree, for which the Department of Extension was partly responsible. The MSA program, with an emphasis on agricultural extension, had been deemed academically acceptable, providing that it include rural sociology and agriculture courses, not just education courses. During his visiting year, Verner taught a rural sociology course as well as adult education courses suitable for agriculture students.¹⁰ Agriculture professors included Verner on a Committee on Agricultural Extension, and welcomed him to an annual seminar in agricultural education.¹¹

Verner also contacted the School of Nursing, whose administrators had long supported continuing nursing education. UBC was about to construct Canada's first university-based teaching hospital, and government and Kellogg Foundation grants were forthcoming for medical education.¹² Verner's contacts with the School were consistent with the national campaign by Roby Kidd and the CAAE to link nurses with adult education, mental health, and social work.¹³ It is unsurprising, then, that Verner was scheduled to meet with UBC nursing instructors on 29 March 1960.¹⁴

Several UBC social scientists interested in "applied sociology" were also interested in Verner. Briefly a social worker himself, Verner began a long association with Leonard Marsh of the School of Social Work (and later Professor of Educational Sociology).¹⁵ Verner also met with anthropologists Harry Hawthorn " MacKenzie's fishing buddy " and Cyril Belshaw, whose support helped ensure Verner's cross-appointment as Visiting Professor of Sociology to teach a course in rural sociology.¹⁶ In return, the new Department of Anthropology, Criminology and Sociology enlisted another sociologically-trained ally.

Verner made other personal connections. His avocation as a historical cartographer linked him intellectually with Scarfe (whose graduate studies had been in geography) and perhaps other UBC geographers, and his interest in old books linked him to the university's librarian. Neal Harlow, the university Librarian, had a favourable impression of Verner. Since Verner wanted to leave his position at Florida State University, these self-introductions were likely motivated in part by imagined prospects of employment.¹⁷

However well Verner may have impressed colleagues at UBC during his visiting year, the envisioned Department of Adult Education still needed students. Students did not immediately enroll in the new program in large numbers. Between 1957 and 1961, nearly ninety students enrolled in graduate adult education courses, but only six registered in the winter session. The courses may have become more popular as electives, but few were officially registered in the adult education degree program. Just one person graduated from the program in 1960, and only one each year until 1964 (table 1).¹⁸

Verner promoted his program in Vancouver and the province, especially among those interested in adult education. He met with representatives from the teachers' fraternity Phi Delta Kappa, Frontier College, the Young Men's Christian Association, the Nurses' Association (and other nurses), the British Columbia Teachers' Federation, Abbotsford night schools, the College of Education, and spoke at the Vancouver Institute. He visited Victoria, Prince George, Salmon Arm, and Langley, British Columbia, where he promoted "lifelong" education, always claiming it to be in the public interest. Acceptance by school trustees and public school "directors of evening schools" was particularly important since they were looking for status as "directors of adult education." Friesen wrote to Faculty administrators that Verner had "won the confidence and respect of government and other agencies."¹⁹

Verner's meeting with the British Columbia Adult Education Council was a particularly direct attempt to convince practicing adult educators to enroll in the UBC program. Verner spoke of the growth of institutionalized adult education in Vancouver, and emphasized the importance of university training for those working as adult educators. He encouraged the audience to take their profession seriously and be proud of their work. Perhaps most importantly, Verner described attacks on funding for organized adult education across the United States, not because adult education was trivial, but because the field was unorganized and adult educators were "not responsible professionals . . . [who] don't know enough about what they are doing . . . are not learned in their professions . . . don't develop programs intelligently . . . cannot prove [program] effectiveness."²⁰

To a growing field of practice enjoying increased government funding and public support, these words were threatening. Verner prescribed research-based university education to prepare effective adult educators. American universities had already assumed such leadership, particularly after Carnegie Corporation funds came to Columbia University for adult education research in the 1920s.²¹ Verner, in that tradition and consistent with CAAE leaders like Kidd, also a Columbia alumnus, promoted universities as the home of the "discipline" of adult education and the place to train adult educators.

When Verner returned to Florida State University, Scarfe bade him a friendly farewell.²² But Scarfe was not saying good-bye; he had already invited Verner to "rejoin" UBC in some capacity, and Verner was "looking forward to a long, pleasant, and fruitful association with [Scarfe] and the University of British Columbia."²³ Verner had evidently impressed many of the people with whom he fraternized during that first year, and was among the first of many American academics hired at UBC during the 1960s. Less than a year later, Verner received a formal employment offer from UBC.

Friesen, Scarfe, and Thomas had chosen Verner to be the new professor of adult education. Verner's prior success at Florida State University and his vigorous promotions in British Columbia demonstrated that he had the political skill to build a new department. Verner was careful to know the terms of his appointment, having just become a full professor at Florida State. In March, 1961, Friesen conveyed an offer of Associate Professor at $11,000 per annum; Verner immediately accepted. To make the appointment acceptable to the university, Scarfe promptly requested and received a brief biography and three glowing references.²⁴ Less than a month later, Scarfe offered Verner a full Professorship at $12,000 per annum. Doctorates were still rare in many faculties at UBC, especially in the Faculty of Education, and such a title and salary compared favourably with those colleagues sharing Verner's qualifications. Scarfe also held the view that Faculty of Education salaries should be generous and competitive with other institutions.²⁵ Verner was appointed, without term, as Professor, starting 1 July 1961. Everything, Friesen wrote, was "working according to plan."²⁶

Verner was also a valuable new recruit to the Faculty of Agriculture. The Department of Agricultural Economics was desperate for a new appointment to meet teaching demand and to expand its program. Although Verner was not quite the econometrician requested, he was cross-appointed to the Department of Agricultural Economics and satisfied some of the demand without additional costs.²⁷ Whether the appointment was a result of Verner's ongoing network or not, he became UBC's first Professor of Adult Education and a department of one. At that time, Faculty of Education departments lacked the power to control their own budgets and appointments, requiring approval from the Dean's Office. Until the early 1970s, Verner always seemed to get approval from his Dean and other administrators as he established a curriculum, attracted students and new faculty members, published original research, and obtained research grants.

Verner's participation in the Faculty's Graduate Division Working Committee helped him to influence policy in his favour. Graduate degrees in Education were awarded through the Faculty of Graduate Studies (FoGS), a relatively new body of growing importance. Small when established in 1949, FoGS had grown as graduate students seeking advanced credentials increasingly brought financial and status rewards to the university. With MacKenzie's support, graduate studies across UBC were growing by the late 1950s.²⁸ Verner, as an advocate of graduate studies and an active researcher, was part of this growth. Scarfe appointed Verner Associate Director of Graduate Studies for the Faculty of Education by 1966, not unusual given the Division's small size and the small cadre of active researchers in the Faculty. The Director of the Graduate Division, Harry Stein, was one of Scarfe's loyal Manitoba recruits who, along with Verner and other committee members, effectively set policy for the Division. The Working Committee subsequently supported requests from the adult education department to admit students who lacked formal credentials, and recognized the department's need for more teaching staff.²⁹

Verner's administrative standing also helped him to create an adult education curriculum to fit his view of the field. Verner had earlier changed the content of several graduate courses during his year as Visiting Professor, which remained intact after 1961. In addition to the already existing course in agricultural extension, Verner introduced an undergraduate and a graduate course in agricultural economics in 1961 and 1964 respectively. He then used the same courses for three degrees. The Master of Arts was the basic adult education degree and the Master of Education was a part-time, non-resident degree otherwise the same. The Masters of Science in Agriculture (Extension) was similar but included courses in agriculture and rural sociology.³⁰

In 1966, Verner received approval to offer both the non-degree diploma and doctorate in adult education. The diploma required special consideration since it was administered through the Department of Extension, but used the same courses as Verner's magistral programs, plus a project or internship arranged by Extension. Because it admitted people who may have lacked a degree, it required the supervision of a special Senate committee to ensure academic standards. However, the committee was initially comprised of such adult education supporters as Dean Scarfe, Dean Eagles, John Friesen, and Verner himself. The FoGs had recommended the Doctor of Education degree in 1961, and by 1966 such departments as Educational Psychology, Educational Administration, and Educational Foundations were vying for the privilege of offering a doctoral program. That a doctorate was offered in adult education, using the same core courses as the other programs, is a testimony to Verner's influence.³¹ Verner increased the number of programs built on the same curriculum from three to five.

Verner impressed other university administrators. In 1967, John Goodlad, Dean of the Graduate School of Education at the University of California (Los Angeles), reviewed the Faculty of Education for Dean Cowan of the UBC Faculty of Graduate Studies. Goodlad noted only "little outposts of graduate emphasis" in the Faculty, but praised the adult education personnel as competent, empirical researchers who may one day be able to offer a Ph.D. Goodlad further praised the Graduate Working Committee as "first rate," bolstering Verner's status with Cowan. Verner and Cowan (along with Friesen) had met earlier on other UBC committees, suggesting the Dean supported Verner's activities to some degree.³²

Although Verner had a secure and influential academic position in the Faculty of Education, he maintained old ties with the UBC Department of Extension. Verner joined the "Council of University Extension and Adult Education" as a consultant, participating in Extension programs throughout the 1960s. Part of Verner's motivation may have been personal; Friesen wanted to remain in touch with the adult education program, and Friesen had helped with Verner's appointment.³³ The personal contacts with Extension grew during the 1960s when two early adult education graduates gained employment in the Extension Department, one of whom later became the Director of the Centre for Continuing Education.

Another motive for cooperation with Extension was likely self-interest for both Extension and Verner's department. The Extension Department was useful in promoting Verner's programs while at the same time advertising its own professional diplomas and certificates. Once favoured by President MacKenzie, Extension faced a dwindling budget and a new mandate for cost-recovery professional education under MacKenzie's successor, John Macdonald.³⁴ Extension launched several new diploma programs in the mid-1960s, including the Diploma in Adult Education that provided a formal association between it and the academic department from 1966 to 1985.

Impact and Demands of Local Labour Market

Verner maintained other beneficial connections throughout UBC in the 1960s and 1970s to help recruit students to his programs. Regardless of Verner's status in the Faculty's establishment (that was, with the exception of Sadie Boyles, quite literally an "old boys club"), the success of the department depended on students. In particular, hiring new faculty members would be difficult without student demand. Fortunately for Verner, several developments in British Columbia boosted enrollment across UBC as well as in the adult education department. An expanding and changing local economy encouraged demand for highly skilled workers of all ages in many industries, leading to increased demand for competent adult educators.

Verner diverted students with career interests in agricultural extension and agricultural economics into his courses. The Faculty of Education required that three to six units (one or two full courses) of an education graduate degree be taken in another Faculty; three to six units of agriculture fulfilled that requirement yet were effectively adult education courses.³⁵ Adult education students often found themselves in the agriculture classes to complete program requirements, and others were drawn to the agricultural extension aspect of adult education from across British Columbia, the United States, the West Indies (where Roby Kidd had once been active) and later Australia, following Verner's 1971 tour of the Antipodes.³⁶ The importance of the agriculture courses began to wane by about 1972 as the department grew in other directions.

The old alliance with health education was a continuing boon to the adult education department. As public health-service provision grew in Canada and British Columbia, UBC assumed more responsibility for preparing health professionals. Verner subsequently instructed "Nursing 202" (Principles of Teaching) in 1967 and 1968, and was briefly a Lecturer in the School of Nursing. He provided a keynote address to the Canadian Public Health Association in 1969 and instructed various workshops for health-care providers.³⁷ Faculty members in the School of Nursing seeking advanced credentials also enrolled in Verner's program.³⁸ Few opportunities then existed at UBC for advanced education in any facet of nursing. The Faculty of Medicine's Department of Continuing Medical Education paid scant attention to nurses, and none to their formal credentials. Although a Master's Degree in Nursing was approved in 1966, with four of Verner's adult education courses accepted as electives, the School remained academically weak and unable to provide doctorates or instruction in all aspects of nursing practice.³⁹

In 1971, Verner and colleagues in the Division of Continuing Education in the Health Sciences secured a large grant from the Kellogg Foundation for nurses to study adult education at UBC. The Foundation had provided funds for health and education since the late 1930s, particularly in rural areas, and by the 1950s also supported agriculture and continuing adult education. During the 1960s, Kellogg funds generally supported health care, rural development, and education, with some twenty percent of its grants awarded outside the United States.⁴⁰ Verner, the CAAE, and UBC were no strangers to Kellogg funding. UBC's "Kellogg programs" to train nurses as educators used the existing adult education courses but included special sections of the advanced seminar and health-care electives. A total of fifty-eight students enrolled directly under this initiative.⁴¹

Finally, the new program in Community and Regional Planning sent students to Verner's courses. Offered by the Faculty of Graduate Studies and supported by the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation in Ottawa, the program became a School within about ten years and by 1970 offered a Ph.D. The program was advised by several levels of government at a time of rapid urbanization in British Columbia and across Canada.⁴² Verner's course on rural sociology became a recommended elective after 1966.

Activity in agriculture, nursing, and community planning at UBC helped provide student demand for Verner's courses, but the growth of various forms of adult education provision throughout the province also contributed. Much of the growth was independent of Verner, who continued to promote his programs to prospective students and employers. During Verner's first year as a UBC professor, he resumed his active speaking schedule, targeting school boards and particularly the Vancouver School Board as major providers of adult education.⁴³ Later, Verner tapped into British Columbia's new system of community colleges. Two of Verner's early students became prominent administrators at Vancouver Community College and the British Columbia Institute of Technology respectively. As the colleges shifted from youth-oriented "junior colleges" to comprehensive community colleges in 1971, Verner recommended that staff have adult education degrees. Many adult education graduates of the 1960s and early 1970s found employment in colleges.⁴⁴

Adult education programs and courses became more popular through the 1960s as Verner responded to and encouraged demand. Student enrollment in the adult education program climbed quickly from the late 1960s to the late 1970s to create one of the largest graduate departments in the Faculty of Education.⁴⁵ The adult education department's policy of catering to a mature clientele by providing courses late in the afternoon (after regular hours of work), correspondence courses, and flexible admissions criteria also helped attract students, although an M.A. degree still required a year's residency.⁴⁶

The adult education department also acquired a gendered dimension: a majority of magistral students until 1970 were male, but from 1970 to 1985 most were female and many were in health fields. The Kellogg project for predominantly female nurses accounts in part for this shift, but so too does a wider demographic change. Not until 1960 did women substantially and proportionately begin to increase their numbers in Canadian undergraduate university programs, particularly in education, arts, home economics, and nursing, and by the 1970s women began entering graduate programs in numbers. The pattern at UBC was similar to the national pattern.⁴⁷ The adult education department provided one of the few options for women holding "female" degrees to pursue graduate education relevant to their vocations.

Women may have regarded the adult education department simply as an opportunity for graduate study, but their enrollment helped validate the department. However, while magistral students were predominantly female, only about one-third of the doctoral graduates before 1985 were women.⁴⁸ If doctoral students were the aspiring (or encouraged) adult education leaders or future professors of adult education, it is clear that the UBC program was attracting and supporting males in that role.

Increased student numbers allowed the department to hire more faculty members. Four assistant professors were hired between 1965 and 1969. Three were Americans, and all were men. Russell Whaley came in 1965 but stayed only one year, eventually becoming Associate Professor of Health Education at Oregon State University. John Niemi replaced Whaley in 1966, completed his doctorate in adult education at the University of California, Los Angeles the following year, and stayed at UBC until 1974. After 1968, Gary Dickinson taught and advised students for several years before joining the faculty until 1981. Dickinson was a British Columbian who had taught adults in public schools before meeting Verner, under whom he completed a magistral and the department's first doctoral degree. James Thornton, an American and former school teacher who had taken his doctorate under a colleague of Verner, was hired in 1969 and stayed until retiring in 1991. Until 1974, Verner, Thornton, Dickinson, and Niemi were the UBC Department of Adult Education, the first three becoming close colleagues.⁴⁹

As a symbol of Verner's standing in the Faculty and success in establishing his programs, the department in 1969 acquired the use of the UBC President's official residence. The new President, Walter Gage, was not using the house, and space was scarce across campus, but the move was widely interpreted as evidence of Scarfe's politicking on Verner's behalf.⁵⁰ (The department later paid homage to Scarfe by dedicating the 1973 Annual Report, the celebratory retrospective Pioneering a Profession, to him.) The department enjoyed some five years at the President's residence before relocating to an old fraternity house at the edge of campus.

As student demand grew, a second "wave" of faculty members joined the department. In 1974, Gordon Selman left his position as Director of Extension to join the adult education department, bringing with him a healthy salary, tenure, and standing as Associate Professor. Selman was born and raised in Vancouver, and held a master's degree in history from UBC. Although lacking a doctorate, Selman had extensive ties with UBC administration and considerable local and international respect as an educational administrator.⁵¹

Also in 1974, Roger Boshier emigrated from New Zealand to join the department as a "research methodologist," specializing in quantitative hypothetico-deductive statistical analysis. Boshier eventually became a tenured full-professor at UBC and an energetic promoter of adult education. Dale Rusnell, an Albertan who had been a school teacher and industrial trainer before graduating from the UBC adult education program, joined the department the following year as an Assistant Professor and stayed six years. John Collins, a graduate of the University of Utah, joined the adult education department in 1976 by transferring from the Department of Academic Planning, and maintained a cross-appointment in the Department of Psychology. Collins was a friend of Verner who had earlier contributed to adult education workshops and supervised graduate students. Daniel Pratt also transferred (with tenure) from the Faculty of Education's Department of Communications, Media and Technology in 1976, a time when the adult education department was anxious for new personnel. Pratt, an American whose doctorate was from the University of Washington, examined the psychological aspects of communications media, and developed an interest in adult teaching and learning.⁵²

During the early to mid-1970s, department members energetically promoted themselves among and to various organizations and people in Vancouver, British Columbia, and abroad. They participated in conferences and workshops with personnel from the UBC Department of Extension, local chapters of the CAAE and Canadian Vocational Association, British Columbia Association of Adult Education Directors, and provincial colleges and institutes. Some of these people were themselves climbing the career-hierarchies of the new post-secondary institutions.⁵³ Department members were also active in the Northwest Adult Education Association, a group that attracted academics and practitioners from Canada and the United States. By the mid-1970s, Verner, Niemi, Dickinson, and later Boshier had a strong presence in the American Association for Adult Education (or later incarnations) as researchers, consulting editors, or members of the Association's Commission of Professors. Verner provided some consulting work for foreign governments, and Boshier promoted adult education and the UBC program among former colleagues in New Zealand. Selman was active with practitioners in Vancouver, and with a wide array of committees and projects at UBC and abroad.

Research

The final necessary task in establishing Verner's department was to develop a respected academic discipline to guide practitioners, inform public policy, and attract research contracts. Students wrote theses following Verner's predilections, adding to a formal and international body of avowedly unique adult education theory.⁵⁴ Meanwhile, Verner was initially very successful in attracting research contracts. His status and influence in the Faculty during the 1960s owed much to his research contracts from the Canadian government. However, the early contracts had limited continuing influence, and once they expired, little else immediately took their place.

Contracts for research first came to Verner through agricultural economics, an established research field in Canada and elsewhere.⁵⁵ In the early 1960s, with demand for agricultural economists increasing in the Canadian civil service, the UBC Department of Agricultural Economics under Professor W. J. Anderson helped launch a non-profit research organization. Supported by federal and provincial governments, farmers' organizations, co-operatives, and private businesses, the new Agricultural Economics Research Council of Canada involved Anderson as the Director of Research and Geoff Andrew (MacKenzie's former Deputy and adult education supporter) as a Director. In 1964, Verner registered with the Agricultural Economics Research Council of Canada as a rural sociologist and Professor in the UBC Department of Agricultural Economics. The Council eventually published an article by Verner in 1966 and an entire study by Verner and student Peter Gubbels in 1967.⁵⁶

More important than its publications, the Council provided Verner an opportunity to access federal research funding for rural economic development. In 1961, after several years of discussion in the Canadian Senate, the federal government passed the Agricultural Rehabilitation and Development Act (ARDA). ARDA provided money, technical assistance, and support services to research low employment, poverty, and the effects of rapid technological change in rural Canada. Although Canadian agri-business posted record profits in the early 1960s, many rural areas remained in poverty. Poverty was linked to improper land-use, resource and land-use conflicts, rapid urbanization, and low education. One of ARDA's more ambitious projects began in 1963 with the Canada Land Inventory (CLI), a cooperative effort with provincial governments to survey, classify, and map human and natural resources across vast regions of Canada.⁵⁷ Verner, with biologists and economists in the Faculty of Agriculture, played a prominent role in the CLI.

British Columbia was the only province to conduct socio-economic surveys as part of the CLI. Verner directed, conducted, and co-published some thirty surveys over five years, hiring adult education students as assistants who often used CLI data in their theses. Verner's background as a rural sociologist, agriculture extension researcher, and amateur cartographer made him well-suited to the project, although by the late 1960s Dickinson was doing much of the work. Education was a minor theme in the reports, but rural adult education (tied to the Technical and Vocational Training Assistance Act) was an aspect of the project that Verner and his assistants discussed whenever possible. The CLI contracts provided considerable funding to the adult education department, and were perhaps the largest external grants in the Faculty at the time.⁵⁸

Verner and Whaley also received modest federal funding from the Special Planning Secretariat of the Privy Council for a study on disadvantaged adults. Heralded by ARDA, federal welfare programs to combat poverty and improve economic opportunity were planned by 1965. Much of the proposed action fell in the fields of education, health, labour, and industry, and Verner tapped into these initiatives. He spoke publicly on the role of education in alleviating poverty and sat on a national inquiry committee with venerable social democrat Member of Parliament Stanley Knowles, although the Montréal Gazette identified Verner as a sociologist rather than an adult educator.⁵⁹

Verner sought other similar research contracts. In 1970, Verner advertised his research services to the Director of Farm Service, Farm Credit Corporation. In 1972, the federal Department of Agriculture, Economics Branch, sought information from Verner regarding a farm management information system, and Verner had colleagues in the federal government. As late as 1977, Verner was active with the Social Science Lead Committee of the provincial Ministry of Agriculture.⁶⁰ The CLI projects, however, remained the only significant source of federal funding.

UBC's adult education professors found two other sources of contracted research. In 1973, Verner and Dickinson prepared a study for the Canadian Labour Congress on union education that was more distinctively oriented to adult education. Similarly, the Kellogg grants for health educators provided funds for several reports on health education. Funding for adult education research was otherwise hard to find. The federal ARDA studies were only incidentally about adult education and the Privy Council grant eventually yielded a book-length review of literature that said more about the demographics of poverty than adult education.⁶¹ Although federal funding of the social sciences more generally was increasing, by the mid-1970s Verner and his colleagues had not tapped into it.⁶²

The provincial government was similarly unsupportive despite hopes for centralized, direct, and controlling leadership of the field. Adult education research had not been important to the provincial Social Credit party during the 1960s, although the Socreds certainly encouraged vocational training.⁶³ The social democratic New Democratic Party (NDP) formed its first government in British Columbia in 1972 but did not respond strongly in favour of human services professionals and experts. Despite a flurry of new legislation, the NDP paid little attention to the UBC adult education department or even the School of Social Work. Even Verner's agricultural work went unrecognized, despite the NDP's new commitment to agricultural land reserves. Nor did provincial public institutions recognize adult education credentials above others in their hiring policies.⁶⁴

Even without external grants, Verner, Dickinson, and then Boshier published extensively up to the mid-1970s. However, their research was poorly known to UBC education colleagues or around the province or country. Academic support for a "discipline" or science of adult education primarily came from academics outside UBC. Despite years of research productivity, members of the adult education department at UBC until the mid-1970s failed to gain scholarly distinction with colleagues outside their immediate circle.⁶⁵

Not surprisingly, the department began to exhibit a rather unique sub-culture, especially after 1969. Voluntarily segregated at the President's House and then an old fraternity house, students were able to take courses, conduct research, and socialize almost exclusively with adult education faculty members. In 1971, Verner assumed advising duties for all twenty doctoral students in the department, and this cohort worked on several in-house booster publications. A certain ésprit de corps is suggested by a cheeky poem written in the early 1970s that described the hierarchy of the department ruled by "the great god Coolie."⁶⁶ A New Zealand colleague recalled Verner's subversive advice that "one shouldn't be intimidated by the myths of University standards nor weighed down by university tradition." Wayne Schroeder, Visiting Professor in 1977, also noticed that "a student stratification appears to have developed that is potentially counter productive or divisive." The "in group" was, Schroeder believed, autonomous and insular. Presumably, it was this "in group" that wrote the strong (and almost sycophantic) memos requesting Verner's supervision after his retirement.⁶⁷ These may have been "halcyon days" for some, but to others they may have been days of cliques and missionary zeal.⁶⁸

Conclusion

Coolie Verner had shown great skill in exploiting the administrative machinery of his institution for nearly fifteen years. He established a program of study previously unknown at a Canadian university by creating a curriculum, attracting students, and hiring staff. He and his associates produced research in support of a "discipline" of adult education and found clients willing to pay for these insights. His popular and, at least in the adult education community, well-respected program claimed the administrative, social, economic, and intellectual legitimacy required for its very existence. Yet Verner's success had depended on administrative privilege and the circumstances of this privilege were changing. Administrators who had supported Verner were retiring or moving on. People with no particular support for the UBC Department of Adult Education gradually assumed more power in the Faculty of Education and were willing to investigate Verner's alleged administrative improprieties and student over-load in late 1971. The 1969 Committee on the Future of the Faculty of Education initiated organizational reform that diminished the independence - some called it isolation - of the adult education department.⁶⁹ Adult education professors were denied authority to revise their own curriculum in 1976, while colleagues in the Departments of Higher Education and Educational Administration studied colleges, community and health services, and other non-formal educational settings.⁷⁰ Other Faculties across campus gradually lost interest in sending students to Verner's program.

Verner relinquished his chairmanship of the department in 1973 (the year Scarfe stepped down as Dean) and all but disappeared in Faculty administrative circles.⁷¹ He was weary and would soon be ill. He retired early in 1977 leaving others to maintain the adult education program in light of new demands and expectations. Although Verner did not achieve his goal to "pioneer a profession" through unique adult education theory, he had created an institutional structure that long outlived him. Subsequent adult education professors responded to critics and maintained the program partly by embracing the winds of social criticism that swept across North American universities in the early 1980s.⁷² Verner's creation continued to attract students and provide a home for research, but it never quite reclaimed the independence and privilege it once enjoyed.

The story of UBC's adult education department reminds us that the different administrative units within a university are not always "natural" divisions defined by their subjects of study, methodologies employed, clientele served, or value to society. Politics and personal ambition within the academy play a role in defining what is studied and who participates. Universities play a broader role in legitimizing and advancing particular kinds of knowledge but the political dimension of scholarship is often present long before the research and teaching begin.


Notes