Elizabeth Lawrence Cless (January 28, 1916 - July 20, 1992) pioneered the development of continuing education for women, which provides new paths and programs to help women resume higher education that they had interrupted or postponed. Starting at the University of Minnesota in 1960, and subsequently at The Claremont Colleges in California, Cless developed and expanded the scope of those programs; by 1970 educators had created 400 of them throughout the United States. In 1979 she developed and founded The Plato Society, a lifelong learning organization at UCLA focused on the intellectual growth of men and women over 50. Cless appears in Feminists Who Changed America, 1963-1975. Early life and education Elizabeth Lawrence was born in Akron, Ohio, on January 28, 1916. Her father was a traveling businessman; she attended 11 different schools before reaching the tenth grade. Her high school was the University of Minnesota laboratory school; she went to Florence, Italy, for a final, art-immersed high-school year. She attended Radcliffe College, graduating in 1938 with a B.A. degree cum laude in the fine arts of India. Her first year of graduate work was in the museum administration program of Harvard's Fogg Museum; her second was at the Oriental Institute of the University of Hawaii. Marriage and travel In 1942, she married U. S. Navy lieutenant Irving Clark. During the war years, she held a variety of fine arts jobs, including at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C., where she used intelligence reports to locate art treasures and get them moved out of the war's path to safety. After the war, she cared for her two young children and participated in women's clubs and civic activities in Minnesota. Three years after her first marriage ended, she married Howard L. Cless, a paper products executive. The Minnesota Plan Cless joined the General Extension Division of the University of Minnesota in 1954. Her original job was to work with faculty members to set up civic, cultural, and liberal arts workshops. That led to involvement in programs to update the skills of professional women, including social workers, K-12 educators, and nurse anesthetists. In 1958 she began meeting informally with University faculty members interested in renewing the intellectual skills of a generation of "Rusty Ladies"—capable women who had been away from school for several years. Cless was asked to plan an experimental liberal arts seminar for them. Sixteen women took that