BARBARA LEIGH SMITH is Provost at The Evergreen State College. She founded the Washington Center for Improving the Quality of Undergraduate Education and has longstanding interests in learning communities, interdisciplinary education, collaborative learning, and institutional change. She thinks longevity matters in creating sustainable long-term change and has been at Evergreen since 1978.

JOHN McCANN received his undergraduate and MPA degrees from the Evergreen State College and his PhD in US history from the University of Oregon. He taught for several years in the evening part-time studies at Evergreen, where he founded the half-time labor studies program. He has published a history of the machinists’ union at the Boeing Company, and has been active in labor education in the Pacific Northwest. He currently works as Academic grants Manager in the provost’s office at Evergreen.