Werner Erhard and Associates
Werner Erhard and Associates, also known as WE&A or as WEA, operated as a commercial entity from February 1981 until early 1991. It replaced Erhard Seminars Training, Inc. as the vehicle for delivering the "est" training, and offered what some people refer to as personal and professional development programs. Initially WE&A marketed and staged the "est" training (in the form of the "est" seminars and workshops), but in 1984 the est training was replaced by a more modern, briefer, rigorous and philosophical program based on Werner Erhard's teachings called "The Forum". In 1991 Erhard sold  the assets of WE&A to a group of employees, who later formed Landmark Education. Erhard then retired and left the United States. The Forum. Evaluations. Objective studies. A scientific study conducted by a team of psychology professors concluded that attending the Forum had minimal lasting effects — positive or negative — on participants. The research won an American Psychological Association "National Psychological Consultants to Management Award" in 1989. The results of the research study appeared in two articles in the "Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology" in 1989 and in 1990, and in 1990 in a book titled "Evaluating a Large Group  Awareness Training". Subjective surveys. The abstract of Charles Denison's PhD dissertation for the College of Education (University of Denver), "The Children of est: A Study of the Experience and Perceived Effects of a Large Group Awareness Training (the Forum)", reported that the Forum had a definite structure, curriculum, and pedagogical approach. Denison's study identified the primary concepts of The Forum, called "distinctions". Denison's data indicate that qualitatively significant results were produced in participants' self-assessed functioning in cognitive, affective, and behavioral domains. Most participants attributed significant life effects to their experience. Public-opinion analyst Daniel Yankelovich did  an investigation of the response of participants to their experience of the Forum. Yankelovich reported that "more than seven out of ten participants found the Forum to be one of their life's most rewarding experiences". The study reported that 95 percent of Forum graduates believe the Forum had "specific, practical value" for many aspects of their lives, and 86 percent of those surveyed said that it helped them "cope with a particular challenge or problem". Conceptual evaluations. Professor of Communication Studies, Bruce R. Hyde, in his paper "Saying the Clearing: A Heideggerian Analysis of the Ontological Rhetoric of Werner  Erhard", discusses the Forum as the beginnings of Erhard's work in developing transformational education utilizing an ontological approach rather than an epistemological approach. Impact. One of the more common reported results of the Forum was the healing of relationships with parents. One facet of this course was to urge participants to stop blaming their parents for their problems and begin to express their natural love for them that was often buried under accumulated resentments. Many projects to come out of WE&A involved working to foster value, camaraderie and opportunities to serve the community. As an example of this a  group of participants in a "High performance" seminar threw a Christmas party at a homeless shelter by planning, preparing, cooking and participating with the people in the shelter. As a result, they came "away with the gift of knowing we are them and they are us, homeless or sheltered, employed or out of work, broke or salaried; we recognize ourselves in their eyes and in their plight."