Survey of Adult Education Opportunities for Labor, 1968

The University and College Labor Education Association (UCLEA) collection documents the history, growth and development of the organization over nearly a forty year period, with materials bulking in the 1970s. The emergence of labor education as a distinct academic field and profession is documented in the correspondence of collection donors and others, whose either original or photocopied materials are present. Areas with materials relevant to labor educators of special interest in the collection include adult and citizenship education (Series 1: John Bennett; Series 8: John MacKenzie; Series 11: Emory Via), OSHA (Series 1: John Bennett), credentialing or standards of the profession (reflected throughout annual meeting materials), the role of women in labor education (Series 1: John Bennett; Series 9: Ruth Needleman; Series 10: Anne Nelson). Some correspondence involving the preceding organizations of the National Institute of Labor Education (NILE) and the University Labor Education Association (ULEA) is contained in this collection, and the relationship of the UCLEA to organized labor, particularly the AFL-CIO, is detailed in the Bennett and MacKenzie series particularly (1 and 8, respectively). Because of MacKenzie's tenure as the UCLEA's Governmental and Organizational Representative while in Washington, D.C., materials detailing those relations are in Series 8. The development of the publishing component of the UCLEA with both the Labor Studies Journal is detailed in Series 12 with materials reflecting the day-to-day operations of the Journal and the Labor Studies Forum is in Series 13 under the donation of Dr. C.K. McFarland, a set running from 1988-1996.

Some other activities detailed in the collection are the Job Placement Service, various task forces (building trades, trade union women's problems, urban affairs, and worker participation), lifelong learning inquiries, and a Quality of Work Life (QWL) proposal for study. Series 5: John Hanson, 1972-1989 details the former president's activities thoroughly with chronological correspondence folders.

The UCLEA collection is arranged in 13 series alphabetically by donor, with the exception of the final series incorporating three donors into one. With this method, each donor's contribution to the collection has remained a discrete entity. Most contributions came to the Southern Labor Archives with an inherent order, and this was adhered to or modified slightly within each series.