"Judicial branch personnel will have the training and education necessary to excel daily in providing justice."

This vision, while not yet a reality, can be achieved. The Judicial Branch Education Study Committee (Committee) has spent nearly eighteen months studying the current system of providing Judicial Branch Education (JBE) to determine what needs to be done to achieve this vision. This is the Commttee’s report. It describes the Committee’s activities, chronicles the advantages and shortcomings of the current system and provides recommendations that it believes will, over time, achieve this vision. In brief, the recommendations fall into three categories. The first is structural. The Committee recommends that a Judicial College (College) be established to provide administrative focus, planning and accountability for JBE in this state. The College will provide accountability for the JBE program, greatly improve coordination among those who provide JBE services, reduce unnecessary costs and provide a place for the fostering of new ideas and practices that will improve the court system. Second, it recommends that all JBE be conducted in manner that is consistent with adult education principles discussed in Recommendations 2-5 of this report. Those principles will improve the quality of the educational program for judicial branch personnel. They deal with the kind of curriculum JBE should cover and the methods of delivery and evaluation it should use. Finally, the Committee makes some additional recommendations about JBE’s funding, its relationship to other educational programs that benefit the courts, and transitional matters.