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by CAEL on Jun 23, 2026
Membership Appreciation Month honors the impact CAEL members make year round. Throughout June, CAEL is celebrating our members through various activities at our Member Hub and beyond, including highlighting individual members. Below is a Q&A with Maritza Riviere-Glover, director of operations for extended learning at Barry University. Maritza is a recipient of CAEL's Adult Learner Advocate Badge, awarded to members who complete the CAEL's microcourse series, so it's no surprise that her impact goes far beyond operations.
How has your own journey shaped the “blueprint” you use to support adult learners today?
My blueprint was drafted from lived experience. I was an adult learner who returned to complete my bachelor's degree and leveraged my work experience for credit. That moment when someone recognized that what I had already learned mattered changed the trajectory of my life. Today, every adult learner advising session is designed around that same belief: adult learners are not starting from zero. They are arriving with expertise, resilience, and purpose. My job is to ensure they take advantage of pathways that honor what they bring and remove the barriers that too often stand between them and the credentials they have already earned in practice.
What does it mean to be an adult learner advocate?
To be an adult learner advocate is to make sure no learner walks their path alone or unseen. It means recognizing the expertise our students already carry through the door and helping them see it in themselves, sometimes before they can. Advocacy is the daily practice of asking, "What is standing between this learner and the credential they have already earned in practice?" and then doing the work to clear it. It is part guide, part translator, part champion, and always rooted in the belief that adult learners deserve systems built for who they actually are.
What’s your favorite “power tool” among CAEL’s member resources?
CAEL's research reports and publications are my go-to power tool. When my team and I meet with an adult learner or sit across from a colleague to make decisions about their experience, I want to bring more than good intentions. CAEL's research gives me the evidence to advocate with confidence, to honor what learners bring, and to push for the pathways and supports they deserve. It is the foundation I return to again and again.
It takes a village. Who are the most essential partners, both inside your own organization and outside, that you are building alongside right now?
At Barry University, we are building alongside our faculty, university leadership, and advisors; each of them shapes whether an adult learner feels seen and supported. Outside our walls, employer partners, community organizations, and fellow CAEL members are essential to the village. No single advisor or institution can carry an adult learner across the finish line alone. The partners who understand that adult learners arrive with experience worth honoring are the ones I lean on most.
What is one thing you are building today with CAEL that you believe will still be standing 20 years from now?
A culture of completion. My current Problem of Practice for my dissertation focuses on adult learner retention and completion, because access without completion is a promise unkept. The advising practices, partnerships, and pathways I am building now, informed by CAEL's research and our shared commitment, are designed to outlast any single program. Twenty years from now, I want adult learners to walk into higher education and find institutions that recognize what they bring, expect them to finish, and are built to make sure they do.
If you could recruit anyone, fictional or real, to be a part of your work crew, who would you invite?
Celestina Cordero. As an Afro-Puerto Rican educator in 19th-century San Juan, she opened the doors of learning to children who had been told those doors were not for them, and she did it long before the world was ready. That is exactly the spirit this work demands. A reminder that recognizing every learner's worth is not new, not radical, and not optional; it is the foundation, and we are here to help them realize what they can accomplish.
