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Winter
2001 Volume 3, Number 2
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Sloan Foundation Renews Support with $1 Million for Penn State World Campus by Celena E. Kusch
“In the new digital economy, lifelong learning is not a luxury; it is a necessity. For most busy adults, that learning will have to be delivered to them in their homes and offices whenever their schedules allow. The World Campus is designed to meet that need,” said Dr. James H. Ryan, vice president for Outreach and Cooperative Extension. “We are grateful to the Sloan Foundation for its generous investment in our continued efforts to extend access to Penn State courses," Ryan added. “An important goal for 1999–2000 was to triple World Campus enrollments from the previous year. With course enrollments approaching 3,000 for July 1999 to June 2000, the World Campus has achieved this goal. The Sloan grant will help us develop the new programs and services necessary to make Penn State a model for the future of distance learning in higher education.” In 1997, the Sloan Foundation first awarded a $1.3 million grant to Penn State to help launch the World Campus. Last year, the World Campus received an additional $1 million. Since then, the World Campus has created a content-rich, highly interactive on–line learning environment that brings together the quality and expertise of faculty members and instructional designers, the flexibility of advanced information technologies and the support of comprehensive, distance-based learner services. The new grant will help Penn State continue its leadership in Asynchronous Learning Networks (ALNs). In asynchronous learning environments, students and faculty do not need to meet at the same time or place in order to exchange ideas (as with e-mail or bulletin boards, for example). The Sloan Foundation supports the use of this technology to reach learners and encourages institutions of higher education to make the leap to distance learning on a large scale.
“The Sloan Foundation’s overall goal for Learning Outside the Classroom has been to make learning available to anyone who wishes to learn, at anytime and anyplace and at an affordable cost,” Mayadas said. “In order to accomplish that goal, it will be necessary for at least a few large universities to establish large-scale on-line learning efforts which offer hundreds of on-line courses, 20 to 40 degree and certificate programs and enroll more than 10,000 learners annually. Penn State has excellent prospects in this respect. It has a strong foundation in serving off-campus populations through other kinds of distance education programs, and it has strong commitment from the executive management, particularly President Graham Spanier.”
“The World Campus shares with the foundation a vision for developing large-scale ALNs and an institutionwide commitment to distance learning. As the single portal for distance education at Penn State, the World Campus is organized not only to serve distant students, but also to facilitate the integration of ALN methods into the academic mainstream of the University,” Miller said. He added that integrating these teaching and learning techniques throughout the University is one of the most exciting challenges for the World Campus.
Already Penn State has made an excellent start in achieving widespread faculty support, Mayadas noted. “It is necessary to strengthen faculty involvement and support for ALN nationwide,” he explained, “and the next stage of the World Campus program will be aimed at doing that through the mainstreaming focus. We support these important efforts and look forward to seeing the World Campus and ALN gain strength and visibility in the Penn State community and in the academic community at large.” 
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