User:LM6407/Draft of Cless Rev 5

Elizabeth Lawrence Cless (January 28, 1916 - April 23, 1992) created the first continuing education program designed for women in 1960 at the University of Minnesota. There, and subsequently at The Claremont Colleges in California, she developed and expanded its scope; by 1970 there were 400 such programs throughout the United States. In 1979 she developed and founded The Plato Society at UCLA, a lifelong learning organization focused on the intellectual growth of men and women over 50. Cless appears in Feminists Who Changed America, 1963-1975.

Early Life and Education
Elizabeth Lawrence was born in Akron, Ohio, on January 28, 1916. Her father was a traveling businessman; she attended 11 different schools before reaching the tenth grade. Her high school was the University of Minnesota laboratory school ; she went to Florence, Italy, for a final, art-immersed high-school year. She attended Radcliffe College, graduating in 1938 with a B.A. degree cum laude in the fine arts of India. Her first year of graduate work was in the museum administration program of Harvard's Fogg Museum; her second was at the Oriental Institute of the University of Hawaii.

Marriage and Travel
Her Ph.D. plans changed in 1942 when she married U. S. Navy lieutenant Irving Clark and traveled even more. During the war years she held a variety of fine arts jobs, including at the Department of State in Washington, D.C., where she used intelligence reports to locate art treasures and get them moved out of the war's path to safety. After the war she cared for her two young children and participated in women's clubs and civic activities in Minnesota. Three years after her first marriage ended, she married Howard L. Cless, a paper products executive.

The Minnesota Plan
Elizabeth Cless's career took a sharp turn after she joined the General Extension Division of the University of Minnesota in 1954. Her original job was to work with faculty members to set up civic, cultural, and liberal arts workshops. That led to deep involvement in programs to update the skills of professional women, including social workers, K-12 educators, and nurse anesthetists. In 1958 she began meeting informally with University faculty members who were interested in renewing the intellectual skills of a generation of "Rusty Ladies"--capable women who had been away from school for several years. Cless was asked to plan an experimental liberal arts seminar for them. Sixteen women took that seminar in the fall of 1959.

The University asked for more, and provided resources and guidance. Cless teamed with Virginia L. Senders of its Psychology Department to create the "Minnesota Plan for the Continuing Education of Women," got University approval, and won a three-year Carnegie Corporation of New York grant. This was the first major continuing education program specifically for women in the history of the United States. It launched in 1960 with Cless and Senders as co-directors. Its objectives were "the full utilization of our resources of able and educated womanpower...[and]...an increase in the personal happiness and satisfaction of many individual women, which will occur as they find ways of making full and productive use of their capacities and their time." Over 300 women enrolled in the program during its first year; by 1965, when Cless left, over 2500 women were enrolled and she was a consultant to nearly 100 continuing education programs in the United States and Canada.

The Claremont Colleges
In 1965 no program like the Minnesota Plan existed for women in Southern California. The Claremont Colleges proposed such a program to the Carnegie Corporation for funding, but planned to open it to mid-career-changing men as well as women and to do research "in the area of non-traditional study and the non-traditional student." The program would build on what had been learned from the Minnesota Plan and similar programs, but would go beyond it. Soon a job offer reached Cless and the entire family moved to Claremont.

The Claremont Colleges' Center for Continuing Education (CCE) opened its doors in 1966 with Cless as its Director. CCE focused on people who wanted to acquire an interrupted or postponed degree in an existing college setting. Educational counseling and planning were key aspects of its program. One-on-one counselors helped students define and navigate choices and worked to accommodate their flexible and part-time attendance needs. Courses were made available at many educational institutions in addition to those in the Claremont cluster. In 1967 Cless introduced two interdisciplinary liberal arts seminars at CCE that were designed to acquaint participants with new ideas spanning a broad range of fields. A third seminar was added in 1968.

Success stories abounded. Cless told a reporter in 1969, "I never discourage anybody any more." In 1972 Cless was elected president of the National Coalition for Research on Women's Education and Development. She continued as the Director of CCE until June 30, 1975.

UCLA
Leonard Freedman, Dean of UCLA Extension and Continuing Education, contacted Cless in early 1979. An influential friend of UCLA had asked him why there wasn't a special UCLA educational program for the rapidly-growing pool of active and intelligent 50- to 90-year-olds in the Los Angeles area. Would Cless be interested in doing a feasibility study, writing a clean-slate program proposal, and perhaps helping get such a program going? Starting in April, 1979, for several years, she did all of that. Cless would spend her weekdays at UCLA, returning home to Claremont only at weekends. The self-directed, self-governing lifelong learning organization that Cless proposed and founded, known as The PLATO Society, continues to this day, functioning much as she had worked out.

Honors
In June 1970, the Radcliffe College Alumnae Association gave Cless its highest honor, the Alumnae Recognition Award, noting that her "determined efforts for over 20 years on behalf of continuing education have removed barriers in many institutions of higher education, thereby permitting women to reenter the academic world and to find satisfying occupations. Her intellect, foresight, dignity and humor have enabled her to create awareness where none was before." Cless was elected to the Radcliffe College Board of Trustees in 1971. She was a Los Angeles Times Woman of the Year honoree in 1970 and was listed in Who's Who Among American Women in 1972.

In 1985, after her husband died, Cless moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, near her daughter, son-in-law, and two grandchildren. Cless died in Cambridge on April 23, 1992, at age 76.