St. Lucian In U.S. Adult Education Hall of Fame

SAINT LUCIAN Professor Dr. Mary Alfred has received one of the highest accolades in the United States for adult education.

Dr.Alfred who hails from Choiseul, was inducted into the International Adult & Continuing Education (IACE) Hall of Fame for her scholarship and leadership in the profession. She was one of 13 leaders from around the world to be inducted at the ceremony in Orlando, Florida.

Dr.Alfred is Executive Associate Dean and Professor attached to the Educational Human Resource Development graduate degree programme at Texas A & M University.

Throughout her 17-year career as at university faculty, Dr. Alfred has developed an international reputation for her scholarship on diversity, equity, and social justice in higher education and the workplace, particularly with her focus on adult learning among women of the diaspora and those in US social welfare programmes. Her work has been disseminated in books, refereed journals, book chapters, conference proceedings, monographs, conference presentations, invited lectures, and research reports, thus reaching a wide audience of scholars and practitioners.

Dr. Alfred has also provided leadership as a board member to the American Association for Adult and Continuing Education (AAACE) and as the elected chair of the Commission for Professors of Adult Education (CPAE). In addition, she has served as an elected member on the steering committee of the Adult Education Research Conference and as a consulting editor or editorial board member for several major journals in the field.

Of notable mention, is her eight-year editorship of Adult Learning (AL), one of the three journals sponsored by the AAACE. In 2010, the executive committee presented Dr.Alfred with the Presidential Award in recognition of her leadership and innovation in the field of Adult and Continuing Education.

In her accepting remarks Dr. Alfred said ‘I am humbled to have been selected as an inductee to the International Adult and Continuing Education Hall of Fame. When I decided to embark on a doctorate in Adult Education, I had no idea of the passion I would acquire for the work and the agenda that drives the discipline. There I found the space, with colleagues of similar passion, to construct knowledge that would challenge the taken-for-granted assumptions and practices that threaten a just and equitable society for adults’ learning and living.’

Dr. Mary Alfred received her earliest training in the profession which has been her life’s work at the Saint Lucia Teacher’s College. She credits her early inspiration, and her life-long success in the field of education to Saint Lucian educator the late Mrs. LuscaTheophilus.