UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA | FACULTY OF EXTENSION
RESEARCH REPORT 2012 discovery engagement citizenship
A Century of Research in the Faculty of Extension respectively the second and third Directors of Extension, waited until they had left office before publishing historical reflections on the important accomplishments and lessons learned during their terms. A.E. Corbett’s interesting and amusing reflections on extension work at the University of Alberta and elsewhere are published in his book We Have With Us Tonight (1957), as well as in various articles in the journals of the day. He had previously published a broader (and more serious) survey titled University Extension in Canada (1952), which shows some similarities to Ottewell’s survey for his thesis done four decades earlier. But what is possibly Corbett’s most significant contribution to the history of higher education in frontier contexts is his biography of his colleague and friend President Tory, titled Henry Marshall Tory, Beloved Canadian (1954). The third Director of Extension at the University of Alberta, Donald Cameron, chose to focus his historical writing on the major accomplishment that best characterized his tenure as Director, the creation and early development of the Banff School of Fine Arts—now known as The Banff Centre. Cameron published his history of this famous extension program in a book titled Campus in the Clouds (1956). This book was completed just as he was about to resign as Director of
Dr. Katy Campbell, Dean
A
century ago President Henry Marshall Tory created a Department of Extension at the fledgling University of Alberta—the
first such Department at a Canadian university. The first significant piece of research to come out of the new Department was complet-
ed in 1915. It was the master’s thesis of the first Director of Extension, Albert Ottewell. Titled The University Extension Movement, it was a summary and analysis of what Ottewell had learned about the practice of university extension elsewhere, particularly in Britain, Australia, and the United States. It was clearly related to what he needed to know in order to make his new Department grow and flourish. This set the pattern for research conducted by the leaders of the Department of Extension and its successor the Faculty of Extension (from 1975) over the next century. Changes in the type of research produced in Extension were closely related to changes in the mission of Extension within the University and within the Province of Alberta. Ottewell, the first Director of Extension, did his research very early in his tenure and focused on what his Department should be doing in the future. A.E. (Ned) Corbett and Donald Cameron,
A.E. Ottewell Director of Extension 1912 - 1928