Title: Extension Services Records

Arrangement
Arranged in series as follows:
Series 1: General Records - records of extension services including articles about the programming offered by Berea College. Records include: correspondence, pamphlets and leaflets, articles, and numerous reports.
Series 2: Berea Opportunity School - records specific to the annual three-week session on the Berea campus administered by Extension Services running from 1924 to 1950. Records include: reports, statistical data, printed materials, administrative papers, articles about and histories of the school, lists of students, lists of students later attending Berea affiliated shools or serving in the military, copies of "The Echo," and other materials documenting the work of the Berea Opportunity School.
Abstract
Berea College's Extension Services provided short-term, informal educational programming and services, primarily in adult education, both on and off campus, to persons living in communities around Berea (including the mountain regions as far away as West Virginia). Programming included Opportunity Schools (held both on campus and in other communities), lectures, and the publication of pamphlets, bulletins and leaflets on a variety of topics.
Information regarding the Berea Opportunity School:
With its first three-week session occurring in 1924, the Berea Opportunity School, part of the college's Extension Services, was a special adult session held on campus in January of each year. Based on the principles of the Danish Folk high schools, the course included twenty-five days of cultural study with lectures in literature, science, history, civil government, Bible studies, and agriculture, home and community problems. Practical instruction in reading, writing and arithmetic was also included in the curriculum. Excursions, fellowship, and recreation, including daily gymnastics based on the Danish Niels Bukh model, were part of the school.
The school was designed for literate adults hungry to learn. Enrollment in first years of the school ranged up from nineteen to forty-four pupils ages eighteen to eighty. Helen H. Dingman served as the original Director of the Opportunity School (from 1924 through 1945) and Marshall E. Vaughn was its first Secretary. Other individuals who would work in the administration of the school include: Katharine C. Griggs, Marie Marvel, and Mary P. Dupay. The 1929 session of the school appears to have been canceled due to the influenza epidemic. The Opportunity School rounded out its twenty-fifth year, and history, in 1950.
Administrative/Biographical History
The County Achievement Contest and the Rural School Improvement Project were short-term programs administered by Extension Services. The records of these programs can be found in RG 10.