Elaine Shelton

Hall of Fame Class of 1996

As a member of the Adult Performance Level (APL) Project at The University of Texas at Austin, Elaine Shelton was the major developer of the APL Competency-based High School Diploma Program. The last six of her ten years with APL were spent as Director of the Project's National Diffusion Network grant. The premise of this project--the application of basic skills to the functional context in which the skills are most relevant to learners--is, over twenty years later, the foundation for many current workplace education programs and K-12 initiatives, including the school-to-work movement in which she is currently working. She later took part in several other adult education projects at The University of Texas, including researching the experiential learning opportunities available to students in Texas's community and technical colleges and directing a National Workplace Literacy Project.

She was elected to the Board of Directors of the American Association for Adult and Continuing Education (AAACE) for seven years, serving as the organization's President in 1988-1989, an office to which she dedicated herself full-time. She was named Teacher of the Year in 1983 by the Commission on Adult Basic Education and received the Program Development Award of AAACE's Adult Competency Education Unit in 1985.