When Richard Albrecht, the newly appointed Executive Director of Continuing Education and Program Development for University College and Director of Temple University Harrisburg, became Acting Director of the Harrisburg Campus in fall 2023, he had a straightforward goal.
“I wanted to ensure the programs and services Temple Harrisburg provides remained at top quality,” he said.
Consider that goal met and surpassed.
“When thinking about the past year, I really can't think of a better analogy than Temple's motto — Perseverance Conquers. It was a long transition period, filled with many valuable experiences,” said Albrecht, who arrived at Temple Harrisburg in 2015 after years of serving the community as a corrections officer, corrections treatment specialist and deputy director for the Franklin County Area Agency on Aging. “There was a lot for me to take in. I still have a lot to learn, but it gave me an opportunity to be introduced to other aspects of university operations that I had not been exposed to previously.”
Albrecht said the transition period from when former longtime director Link Martin retired to today has been very successful.
“One of the goals during that transition period was ‘keeping the train on the tracks,’ which the great team we have here at Temple Harrisburg was more than able to do, but we were also able to add some stops to the train. We added additional University College programs and launched new non-credit programs, such as a Budgeting for Grant Writing course, which expands on our successful grant writing program,” he said. “We expanded externally funded programs, such as our Certified Investigator Training, into the state of Delaware.”
In the past year, Albrecht said, Temple Harrisburg has been able to launch a new Clinical Supervision course “and we are putting the final touches on a community organizing course and a supervision and management series for community health workers.”
“Another collaboration that we have is with the College of Education and Human Development to offer dual enrollment courses on the Harrisburg Campus to local high school students as part of the Teacher Pathway Program,” he said. "When I think about the work that we do at our campus — training programs, professional development, non-credit opportunities — I'm looking forward to being able to continue working with more people and programs to support our communities.”
Temple Harrisburg is a “valuable component of the Temple ecosystem that allows the University to not only have a presence in the central part of the state but all across the Commonwealth,” Albrecht said.
“Our location provides the University as a whole and academic units and programs in particular space to expand and reach people and organizations they might not otherwise have access to,” he said. “We are connecting faculty members, students and learners that wouldn't normally have been introduced to the Temple brand.”
Last year, University College programs offered through the Harrisburg Campus “put the Temple T in front of over 29,000 training participants in addition to thousands more through conference workshop presentations and speaking engagements across the country,” Albrecht said.
“These are individuals that are coming through our training programs because they're embarking on a new career. They are looking to upskill or reskill,” he said. “Our hope is that by providing a high-quality educational opportunity, they think about what else can Temple offer them be it non-credit, continuing education, or maybe even enrolling into a degree completion program or graduate studies.”