Tony Miller, Jr.

Adult Learning and Leadership

Dr. Cockrum
Adult Learner Interview Paper

I had the pleasure of interviewing Sarah Larsen to learn more about her adult learner
experience. She is currently pursuing her doctoral degree in Higher Education Administration.
She currently serves as a Vice President at a college in Memphis, Tennessee. I first met Sarah in
an on ground class last semester where I was fortunate enough to work with her as my partner on
a group project. She seemed very energetic about the class and the project. She communicated
with me very well and although we were only able to meet one time before we presented to the
class, we were on the same page the entire presentation. I chose to interview Sarah because she
seemed not to fit the stereotype of most adult learners and I felt welcome when asking and
conducting the interview with her.
Sarah has been an educator since 1986. She has served as an elementary school teacher,
teacher of the gifted, music teacher, summer school administrator, junior/high school teacher,
college instructor, Academic Dean at a career college, and a as a Director of Operations. She
explained how passionate she is about helping other people learn and how she enjoys seeing the
look on their faces and knowing she has been able to reach them. Although she has done this
work as a job for almost thirty years, she still gives back to the community by serving in roles at
her church such as pianist, choir director, youth director, and adult Sunday school teacher.
I did not know all of these things about her before the interview, but I was able to see
why she was so passionate on our project together because she is a true educator. However, she
does not view herself just as an educator, she also views herself as a student/learner as well. She
has been able to learn many different things throughout her lifetime. As an adult she learned in
college of course, but also through workshops and self-study Continuing Education Units which
related to the positions she held at the time. However, she named many informal settings in
which she has learned many things which have contributed to who she has evolved to be as a

Tony Miller, Jr.

Adult Learning and Leadership
Dr. Cockrum
Adult Learner Interview Paper

growing adult and professional such as playing softball, knowledge acquired through
conversations with friends, progressing through college as a student, supervising staff, and also
being a wife and mother. She expressed how all have helped her as an adult to become a wellrounded individual. Although some were purposeful and some were by accident; they all taught
her lessons about how to treat and care for others and how to live in a society.
The interview overall went really well, but I enjoyed listening to Sarah speak about one
of her self-directed learning activities the most. She had the opportunity to help her college
prepare for institutional accreditation visit as the Academic Dean. She only had eight months to
prepare a 250-page self-study of the college and gather documents to support each of the 264
criteria within each of the ten standards which came with the accreditation process. At the
beginning of this time, she explained how she felt overwhelmed by the task especially since she
had just entered the position as the Academic Dean. Institutional accreditation is crucial for
every college or university, but Sarah made this a self-directed learning opportunity that would
allow her to see the interworking of the college, the process of accreditation, and more
importantly an opportunity to learn and grow as a professional from an informal point of view.
She spent many hours of her day writing and gathering documentation, she also had to
interpret each criteria and determine how her institution met the criteria. She even called the
accrediting agency to clarify questions she had and also re-read the self-study manual multiple
times. She admits this was not what she viewed as a self-directed learning activity, but she made
it one because it made her uncomfortable, challenged her, and she had to make sure she did
everything required or it would affect her institution significantly. This opportunity was very big
stepping stone for her in her career and also gave her a boost in confidence and her ability to do
her job.

Tony Miller, Jr.

Adult Learning and Leadership
Dr. Cockrum
Adult Learner Interview Paper

This was not an easy task as you can imagine and she did encounter some barriers during
this process. She shared with me some of the feelings and emotions she had to deal with during
this process. She said she encountered physical exhaustion, lack of resources, resistance from
people, setbacks and lack of knowledge base. She admitted she did get discouraged at times, but
to encourage herself she reorganized things by task to alleviate extreme physical exertion;
researched for other ways to get resources; found ways to get buy in from the people or left them
alone and moved forward; pushed forward through the setbacks and learned from materials or
others in order to increase her knowledge base. Along with everything I have already talked
about in this paper, Sarah shared with me why she continues to pursue her doctoral degree and
the motivations and joys of her pursuit of this dream.
Chapter two of our textbook Learning in Adulthood discusses the environment of
learning and where it takes place. She agreed that formal learning has brought her a long way in
her career, but she gave a lot credit to her informal or non-formal learning experiences as well.
She went into details about how motherhood has helped her deal with her younger employees
better and understand their viewpoint. It also helped her learn more about herself and be able to
analyze where she once was as an educator and a leader overall. Sarah insisted that the formal
learning she has encountered helped her understand how important knowing the literature is as it
relates to being a professional. She gave a great example about an interview that asked her about
development which she was able to pull from her formal education and apply it with her work
experience and informal education to get buy in from the interviewer so they could understand
her understanding of what development looked like.
Sarah expressed to me how she much rather enjoyed her on ground classes because it
gave her an opportunity to interact with other people, but she said she felt like she differed from

Tony Miller, Jr.

Adult Learning and Leadership
Dr. Cockrum
Adult Learner Interview Paper

other adult learners in this way because in her experience most adult learners do not prefer on
ground classes. She acknowledged the convenience of online learning, but being able to interact
with other students no matter how much younger they were than her is a fun part of the
experience. She thoroughly enjoys the in class experience, but her motivation besides wanting to
have the degree is having the acceptance of others and doing well in her classes. She takes pride
in being a great student and being able to keep up with students younger than her even though
she had not taken formal education classes in over ten years. Of course her family motivates her
and the ultimate goal of achieving a doctoral degree, but the barriers along the way helped
motivate her as well.
This interview not only taught me more about Sarah, but it served its purpose and gave
me insight on what adult learners think about while enrolling into formal education programs. I
learned their motivations are slightly different than traditional aged learners because furthering
their education is not just something to check off their life to do list. This is something they want
for themselves and they put forth a lot of effort to either stay ahead or to keep up. Interviewing
her motivated me to rethink my purpose in pursuing my masters and why I ultimately want to
acquire my doctoral degree. This interview also made me think about the Islamic approach to
learning and why they feel the need to have lifelong learning. With what I have learned thus far
in the semester, I can set forth new informal learning goals for myself while I am continuing my
formal education.

CERTIFICATE OF AUTHORSHIP: I certify that I am the author. I have cited all

sources from which I used data, ideas, or words, either quoted directly or
paraphrased. I also certify that this paper was prepared by me specifically for this
course.

Tony Miller, Jr.

Adult Learning and Leadership
Dr. Cockrum
Adult Learner Interview Paper

Signature

Date: 9/21/2014