Non-Traditional Adult Learners Ready to Graduate from Rutgers–Camden Program

For Immediate Release

CAMDEN --  It’s almost a scene from a movie:  An ordinary conference room at a downtown medical building transforms after hours into a learning enclave for nearly two dozen hard-working adults who break from tradition and routine to study with distinguished university professors in a sophisticated, six-credit American history college course.

The setting sounds cinematic, but it’s all real.  Just ask Camden resident Maria Perez about her transformative experience.

“It’s like I’ve had a blindfold on for years, and not only has it been lifted, but all the questions have been answered,” says Perez, 50, who like most other students in the course “Explorations of American Freedom,” had not sat in a classroom for decades.  Now, they're being readied for college.

Offered by the Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities (MARCH) at Rutgers University-Camden, the free college course includes a reading list that ranges from copies of original 18th-century Constitutional amendments to books detailing the rise and fall of American cities.  

In fact, the book “Camden After the Fall,” by Rutgers history professor Howard Gillette, was the topic of the July 24 class. It marked the close of the second year that the Bard College Clemente Course, which exposes working-class adults to the humanities, has been offered in Camden.  The program is designed to assist adults whose socio-economic circumstances keep them from pursuing, or completing, traditional routes to higher education.

The current class graduates on Thursday, July 31.

“We’re anticipating a third year,” says Gillette, who directs the MARCH at Rutgers-Camden. He calls the Clemente program “an excellent bridge to higher education” that “introduces students to the skills they will need to be successful in a college environment, even as it introduces them to the complex legacy of American history.”

The course, made possible by the We the People initiative of the National Endowment for the Humanities and a grant from the New Jersey Council on the Humanities, is designed to assist adults whose socio-economic circumstances keep them from pursuing, or completing, traditional routes to higher education.

Six hours of college credit are available through Bard College's Clemente Course in the Humanities, which takes its name from the New York-based Clemente Family Guidance Center, named for Major League Baseball player Roberto Clemente, where the first seminar in the program was offered.  The college credits are transferrable and intended to encourage the participants to continue their studies and, ultimately, their degrees.

On a recent Thursday, a diverse group of 21 mostly middle-aged adults – three men and 18 women – gathered in a fourth-floor conference room in the Cooper Hospital complex. It was clear they’d done their homework as Andrew Shankman, an associate professor of history at Rutgers-Camden, encouraged them to look deeply into the American Revolution, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution – and the animating ideas and ideals behind those hallowed documents.

“There are some pretty startling differences” between the initial and the final versions of the Declaration, Shankman told his students. “What are they? What do the words say?”

What followed was a spirited exchange about slavery, the authority of the crown over the American colonies, and the occasional gap between some revolutionary words and practical, political considerations.

Teaching the Clemente course “isn’t all that different” from teaching a conventional class, notes Shankman. “The difference, if anything, is that students here seem to be much more aware of what a privilege it is to be learning. They don’t take it for granted. They take it seriously.”

The faculty of nine, most of whom teach at Rutgers-Camden, is under the direction of Diane Turner, curator of the Charles L. Blockson Afro American Collection at Temple University. “The students range in age, and they have been out of school for some time,” she notes. “For whatever reason they did not have a chance to go to college. But they come to class well prepared. And they’re enthusiastic.”

Perez, who lives in the Cramer Hill section of Camden, is medical education coordinator at Cooper, which provides classroom space for the course.  “I’m here for self-satisfaction,” Perez says. “I couldn’t afford to go to school when I was younger.”

A high school graduate, she “didn’t know what to expect” from the class.  “The best thing about it is all the teachers are so knowledgeable,” Perez adds. “They know the answers."

Sonia Palmero-Pearson, a 37-year-old mother of two who lives in Willingboro, agrees.

“Growing up, I had holes in my education,” she says. “This course has been mind-blowing. The professors have been outstanding, and it has really opened my eyes.

“I feel like I’m no longer on the back burner,” adds Palmero-Pearson, who is a critical care technician at Cooper. “I never was an avid reader, but I’m reading constantly now. I take my books with me everywhere I go, even on the train. I’m so eager to learn what’s next.”

Steve Belfiore, 42, lives in Cherry Hill and is currently unemployed. “Now that I’m older I have this real desire to learn,” he says. “The class has been a lot more than I expected. It has opened up a lot of doors. It’s like a preparation course, to get us ready for college.”

Literally, in his case:  Belfiore will enroll as a history student at Rutgers-Camden this fall.

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