Summer Sessions: The Centrality of Their Purpose to the Academy's Mission

The launching of the new journal, Summer Academe: A Journal of Higher Education, presents an ideal opportunity to revisit issues regarding the purposes, goals, and status of summer sessions within North American institutions of higher education and to reflect upon the question of where we are now as opposed to 28 years ago, when Clay Schoenfeld, perhaps the emeritus doyen of summer session leaders, wrote The American University in Summer (Schoenfeld & Zilman, 1967). At that time it was stated that “the status of summer sessions with respect to organization and administration, instructional, and supporting staffs still leaves much to be desired in many instances” (Schoenfeld & Zilman). In fact, the foreword bears the title “The University Summer Term—Muddle or Model?” In 1985 reflecting upon that book, he wrote in the article, “The American University in Summer Revisited,” the summer term “emerged from the Chautauqua tent show to a more or less respectful aspect of the year-round academic enterprise,”...“faced a number of problems and prospects, and inevitably will continue to do so.” (Schoenfeld, 1985). Today, as this successor to Schoenfeld and Harland Samson reflects upon the last few years of annual meetings of the North Central Conference on Summer Sessions (NCCSS), the North American Association of Summer Sessions (NAASS), and the Association of University SumSummer Sessions: The Centrality of Their Purpose to the Academy's Mission