Thinking of my mom, lifelong student!

If you have lost a loved one in your life, you know the feeling: It is like a hole in your heart (some say soul) that will remain unfillable. I have that empty feeling as I am bereaved, but intermittently I celebrate my late mother's many worthy accomplishments and try to live seconds, minutes, hours in tribute to what I learned from her. On Friday, February 24, http://www.insidehighered.com/ will have "A Kinder Campus" focusing on my mom, Louise Shine, just a sliver of her life, actually -- but an important sliver. She was a college student at Cleveland State University in her sixties and seventies. (Here she is pictured at John Carroll University, my other alma mater, on my graduation day in September 1985.) The IHE piece is called "Tips for a Brighter Campus."

 My views of older learners have been shaped, inspired, molded by having the privilege of leading community writing workshops over many, many years, first sponsored by OASIS, a national organization, and later on my own. As our society greys, let's hope the anticipated wisdom spreads to all generations, and together we can better involve elders on our campuses and in our communities.