Jan Thornton

Associate Provost for Outreach and Adult Access
Cofrin Library CL204C
(920) 465-2641
thorntoj@uwgb.edu

Jan Thornton, Ph.D. is the Associate Provost for the Division of Outreach and Adult Access at UW-Green Bay. Her Division encompasses UWGB’s burgeoning Adult Degree Programs, the Office of Outreach and Extension, and the Small Business Development Center. 

Dr. Thornton is a co-founder of the Business Assistance Center, a partnership operating irrespective of organizational affiliation serving small businesses and entrepreneurs in our region. She initiated the establishment of the 800+ member UWGB Learning in Retirement Institute and, most recently, has spearheaded efforts to create a more seamless transfer environment between UWGB and Wisconsin’s technical colleges including the launch of the new Bachelor of Applied Studies Degree. She is the co-founder of the NEW ERA Faculty Dialogue Group and of the UW Northeast Wisconsin Learning Center at Fox Valley Technical College, Appleton; and is the initiator of Adult Degree’s Northwoods partnership with Nicolet College, Rhinelander.

She was enriched by the experience of being a returning adult student herself, receiving her master’s degree at age 40 and, while working fulltime, earning her Ph.D. at the age of 52. Her doctoral program’s double foci combined scholarship in adult education with administrative leadership. Her academic expertise is in the history and philosophy of adult education; the subject of her doctoral dissertation was Eduard Lindeman, considered by many to be the “Father of Adult Education.” She is an advocate of John Dewey, Lindeman’s principle influence, and the Dewey/Lindeman pragmatist philosophy of adult education. These ideas include the beliefs that reform of society should be a principal goal for adult education and that the development of a practical understanding of the world in which we live should be education’s primary aim. At the core of this philosophy is the pragmatic view that ideas are true if they can be experienced as being true.

Dr. Thornton received her bachelor of science degree in journalism from UW-Whitewater, her master of arts degree in journalism from UW-Madison (where her thesis centered on U.S. appeals courts’ interpretations of “reckless disregard” in libel law), and her Ph.D. from the Urban Education Doctoral Program in administrative leadership with an emphasis on adult education and a minor in history from UW-Milwaukee.