4/11/02

AU'S EARLY LEARNING CENTER TO CELEBRATE 75 YEARS

AUBURN -- Auburn University's Early Learning Center will celebrate its 75th anniversary with a program on April 20.

Formed as the Nursery School for the Study of Child Health and Nutrition and Child Training, the Nursery School -- as it was called then -- began as a summer program in 1926 and blossomed into the first lab school in the South.

In 1964, the center was renamed the Child Study Center, and 24 years later the AUELC became the first nationally accredited preschool in the state of Alabama.

The program and open house at the Glanton House, on the Haley Center Concourse, will begin April 20 at 2:30 p.m., CDT, and will include a welcome by College of Human Sciences Dean June Henton; remarks by AU Board of Trustee Pro Tempore W. James Samford Jr.; David Wilson, associate provost and vice president for University Outreach; and Marilyn Bradbard, head of AU's Department of Human Development and Family Studies, which oversees the center.

Center director Linda Silvern will give a brief history of the center and recognize former center directors. In addition, proclamations from the city of Auburn and the State House of Representatives will be read.

Exhibits recounting the history of the center will be on display and activities for children and adults will be available. Aubie, the AU mascot, will make an appearance.

Silvern said the center has made a mark not only in the education of AU students in the field of early childhood development, but on the children who attended the center.

"We estimate that we have positively impacted the lives of more than 2,500 children and families and at least 2,000 college students," she said. "Many of these students have taken the techniques we model out into the world and have themselves had positive impacts on others."

Silvern says that many current and former AU faculty and staff participated in the center's success, and she has spent several months looking for students who attended the center as a child and those who worked at the center while earning an AU degree.

"We have had second and third generations come to learn and work in the center," she added.

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apr02: AU-learningcenter

CONTACT: Silvern, 334/844-4696.