Harper Community Education's Fall Courses Open for Registration

What's in a name?

After being known as Continuing Education for more years than most of us can remember, this fall we are changing our name to Community Education. We hope you will recognize that the kinds of classes we offer are rooted in the needs and wants of our community – the Harper College district. You will have access to the same great instructors, highlighted in the pages following. You will continue to see our offerings evolve as the interests of the community evolve. Without our students, we would not exist. So, you can expect to continue to get the quality you expect from Harper College.

Internally, we have done some reorganization to better align some of our career-oriented classes with the strengths of Harper’s for-credit career programs. The Continuing Professional Education department is designed to offer programs and certifications that will help you advance or refocus your career. You can find information about these programs at www.harpercollege.edu/pro.
Community Education will continue to offer shorter Career Skills classes that will help you develop the skills you need to succeed in the workplace. If you want to upgrade your computer skills or learn something about grant writing, this is your chance. Bookkeeping, activity director and forklift driving classes are found here. We will continue to develop classes that respond to the ever-changing nature of work as we move into a new era.Our Personal and Cultural Enrichment classes are designed to help you develop your interests and live a fuller, richer life. Our Community Music and Arts Center offers a full range of music classes and lessons along with a comprehensive representation of the arts. Drawing, painting, sculpture, ceramics and photography form the core of our program, though just as the work of an artist creatively evolves, so does our program. Our Writing Studio offers classes in fiction and nonfiction for every level of writer, whether you want to improve your writing skills for personal growth or to publish your book or screenplay. Look for new classes every semester.

Our language program has currently moved to an online format, but we will return to in-person classes when it is possible to do so safely. We do, however, anticipate continuing with some online classes for language learners now that this new dimension has been added to our program.
Health and wellness classes are an important part of our program as we move into our fall semester. We also recognize that you have interests in cooking and wine appreciation that are important to your quality of life. We have a set of classes ready to meet your needs in these areas, including some exciting and new online content in these areas, taught by instructors with nationally recognized reputations.

The Career Skills Institute, our program for students with intellectual disabilities has moved to a hybrid format – with both in-person meetings and work to be done online - for the fall semester.

You’ll notice that our catalog is rich with online learning opportunities for the fall. This is a great opportunity for you to try something from the wide variety of subjects that we offer and the way in which you learn. Our instructors have invested countless hours into developing online content. Our partnership with LERN – a national association of colleges and universities who offer continuing education – is strong as we offer you online classes that feature outstanding instructors from around the country. Finally, you can now take advantage of the huge catalog of online courses offered by ed2go. We are featuring a set of courses that will help you with your transition to working from or learning from home as we continue to work through the necessities imposed by the pandemic.

A final note about our online classes; now that we have established a significant online program you can count on its being a permanent addition to our program. Online learning provides certain opportunities and advantages that cannot be replicated in a classroom. So, while we are all anxious to be able to re-establish a full schedule of in-person classes, we are also proud to be able to continue to offer an interesting online program that satisfies the curiosities and needs of our online learners.

You can browse our program or search for our classes at ce.harpercollege.edu. Log on today!