Raymond Spencer Rodgers - In Memoriam

Raymond Spencer Rodgers, long-time member of AAUA, member of the Board of Directors, and site-host for the 2006 AAUA Summer Assembly departed this life on June 5, 2007.

British by birth, Raymond was adopted during World War II by his American step-father and then spent most of his life in Canada. After serving in Canada’s military, parliamentary press gallery, and government—and following the completion of his Ph.D. degree in government from Columbia University—Rodgers began life as an academic. He taught for a short time at the University of South Alabama prior to his appointment as an associate professor at the University of Louisiana Lafayette (then the University of Southwestern Louisiana). Alarmed by Louisiana’s lack of attention to preserving its French language heritage, Raymond initiated a much publicized challenge to Louisianans for the preservation of their heritage cultures. Those efforts, and his subsequent efforts to help found the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana, led to him being recognized as a important figure in the French preservation movement of the late 1960s and to his informal designation as the intellectual father of the Cajun revival.

After returning to Canada, Raymond expanded his interests to focus on the educational and cultural impacts and potential benefits of technology. In his 1971 book, Man in the Telesphere, he specifically predicted the development of an “electronic web” (the Internet) and discussed the social and educational impacts of such a phenomenon. Connecting with his other interest—the preservation of French-Cajun culture—Raymond cited Acadians as an example of dispersed cultures that could be revitalized into living communities by means of “electronic presence.” (Today we would refer to this as an Internet-based virtual community.) Clearly, Raymond was a pioneer thinker in the potential uses of electronic modalities to enhance education specifically and life in general.

At the time of his death, Raymond was serving as President of Vancouver University Worldwide, dubbed by the Vancouver Sun as the world’s first global university consortium. Consistent with the creative and intellectual leadership he had demonstrated during the early decades of his academic life, Raymond was a catalyst for the expansion of access to university degrees through consortia-based programming. His continuing efforts to challenge bureaucratic constraints and to confront traditionally held limiting perspectives resulted in a vigorous extension of the British university model to settings previously not considered.

Raymond was appreciated by his AAUA colleagues for his insights, intellectual vitality, challenging perspectives, good humor, and generosity. Through his work as a member of the Board of Directors he helped to significantly advance the organization. He is survived by his wife, Lola, who is known to many AAUA members through her attendance at past assemblies.