Alan Mandell knows SUNY Empire State College. For more than four decades, he has served as an administrator and mentor in Social Science. He is currently a professor of adult learning and mentoring and was the first Susan Turben Chair, an appointment reserved to recognize mentoring excellence at the highest level.

“Mentoring is what I think this college is really all about – a reciprocal relationship of mutual learning where there’s the possibility of a student gaining insight through reflection, and mentors always learning from students,” he said, adding that he continues to learn something new from his students frequently.

For many years, Mandell was the director of the college’s Mentoring Institute and now works closely with the Center for Mentoring, Learning and Academic Innovation (CMLAI) to encourage and nurture professional development among colleagues. Next month, Mandell, Shantih Clemans, director of CMLAI, and a small planning group will sponsor a four-part webinar series sparking a national conversation around key issues, challenges and possibilities for the adult higher education landscape. The series, “Re-visioning Adult Higher Education, Underrepresented Adults: Power and Identity in American Higher Education,” has attracted internationally recognized speakers and will be available online, free of charge, via the college’s website.

The upcoming event provides only a glimpse into Mandell’s far-reaching portfolio of work that goes beyond teaching and mentoring SUNY Empire students. He also edits the college journal, All About Mentoring, which bi-annually publishes articles by college faculty and staff on the topic, and is co-editor of PLA Inside-Out, an international online journal of theory, research and practice in prior learning assessment (PLA). In addition, Mandell often makes presentations at conferences and trainings on adult learning, mentoring and experiential learning and is published regularly. In 2009, Mandell was honored by the Adult Higher Education Alliance with the Eugene Sullivan Award for Leadership in Adult Higher Education. He is the recipient of the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching (2001), the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Professional Services (1991) and the Excellence in Mentoring Award (2000).

Asked to draw on 40 years of experience and briefly describe SUNY Empire State College, Mandell said, “This is a place that can attend to an individual student and that person’s academic and personal and professional lives. To me that’s really at the core of the college – providing access for people who haven’t had access before and finding ways to respond to the academic needs of a wildly diverse population, not only in terms of race, ethnicity and gender, but in terms of experience.”