Winter 2001
Volume 3, Number 2
  

World Campus Students Travel
Across Nation to Honor Professor

By Karen L. Trimbath

Distance education may seem, well, distant, but five students enrolled in Noise Control Engineering—an acoustics program offered through Penn State’s World Campus—recently dispelled that notion when they traveled across the country to honor their professor, Dr. Courtney Burroughs.

Burroughs, associate professor of acoustics in the College of Engineering and senior research associate at the Applied Research Laboratory, met many of these students for the first time at a surprise gathering held at The Nittany Lion Inn on the University Park campus.

When the students walked into the room where he was having lunch, a shocked Burroughs exclaimed, “What are you doing here? Now I know why none of you are responding to my e-mails this week!”

The students came from Michigan, Washington, Florida and Minnesota and included engineers, architects and the president of a Seattle firm. They and six other students enrolled in the program gave Burroughs a plaque engraved with the title “Virtual Professor Extraordinaire” and an all-expenses-paid getaway to Seven Springs Resort.

The plaque read: “To Dr. Courtney Burroughs, ‘Virtual Professor Extraordinaire,’ for his outstanding dedication to the Penn State World Campus Program in Noise Control Engineering ... for his infinite patience ... contagious enthusiasm ... continuous encouragement ... sense of humor ... and for caring deeply about each of his students.”

“I am amazed by all this, I never expected anything like this,” Burroughs said.

Content for the program’s three courses is delivered through a combination of technologies, including the World Wide Web, CD-ROM and e-mail, among others, but students at the gathering said that Burroughs developed personal connections through a series of icebreaking questions, frequent phone calls to encourage them to persevere and chat room discussions.

The students have gone beyond acoustics to sharing their lives, according to Julie Wiebusch, president of the Greenbusch Group, an environmental architectural and acoustics firm based in Seattle.

“Courtney’s great. He has helped me to understand the theory that supports the practical hands-on experience I have,” she said. “When I first signed up for this program, I expected a sterile environment where I posted answers and received feedback. By reaching out on-line, we have really gotten to know each other, and we've all become really good friends. This is the first time we have met face-to-face. It’s been very special.”

Other students explained that the establishment of strong virtual connections made them want to make a physical Penn State connection. Mac McGowan from Jacksonville, Fla., added, “I just wanted to say hello and thanks and shake Courtney’s hand. My degree is in electrical engineering, and I design large sound systems. This is the acoustics program I have been looking for but never had time to pursue on a campus. Now I can participate on-line.”

Classmate Bill Hill from Ann Arbor, Mich., joked, “I met Courtney before at an acoustics conference. ... I just wanted to travel to Penn State to get my picture taken with the Nittany Lion.”

Ice cream from the Penn State Creamery, a tour of campus and a visit to the Nittany Lion Shrine also were part of the students’ itinerary. Burrough’s wife, Mary Alice, who had known about the surprise for several months, invited all the students to a special dinner at their home.


Dr. Courtney Burroughs (seated), associate professor of acoustics in the College of Engineering, talks with some of his World Campus Noise Control Engineering students. Julie Wiebusch and, back row, from left, Mac McGowan, Scott Hanson, John Kopko and Bill Hill traveled to University Park campus to surprise their instructor with a plaque engraved with the title “Virtual Professor Extraordinaire” and an all-expenses-paid trip to Seven Springs Resort.
Of his efforts to reach out to students, Burroughs remarked, “The World Campus has an advantage with people working fulltime who can’t go back to school. The challenge for the faculty member is to make the experience rich in content and highly interactive. I try to respond to my students pretty fast and make sure they know somebody’s there for them.”

Companies are facing increasing demands from government regulations and the public to control product, workplace and environmental noise levels. The noise control program, developed by faculty from the Graduate Program in Acoustics in the College of Engineering, can help professionals learn to develop treatments for noise problems. Completing the program prepares students to take the Institute of Noise Control Engineering certification exam.

Burroughs is the program’s lead faculty member and also teaches courses in architectural acoustics, structural acoustics and the acoustics of musical instruments.

Information about the Noise Control Engineering program is available on-line at http://www.worldcampus.psu.edu/pub/programs/nce/index.shtml.


Betty Campbell
Columbia, S.C.
Education Associate for the South Carolina Department of Education

“I went into the Webmaster program because I was interested in the Web in general, but then I became interested in all the opportunities in on-line training. My experience with taking an on-line course really made me interested in that way of learning, especially for adults. It crystallized my belief that on-line training is definitely what we need to be doing.

“I am now working with the American Dietetics Association to develop on-line training for dietitians in specialized areas, especially in the school environment. We have been given a grant to develop training programs that teach dietitians from other areas (like hospital food service) about the specific needs of the schools, the regulations and even how to get a job in that area, and I’m the Webmaster for this program. It was really valuable for me to be a student on the other end of the technology. I was also glad that I was one of the first students to go through the Webmaster program, so I had the benefit of seeing the courses change and develop to solve the problems we encountered. It has all been very interrelated for me. On-line training is huge. It’s growing in leaps and bounds, and I didn’t even really see that potential for using the Webmaster Certificate at first. The World Campus has been a gateway into a huge area for me.”


Julie Wiebusch
Seattle, Wash.
President of Greenbusch Group, environmental architectural and acoustics firm

“When I originally signed up for the World Campus courses, I just assumed it would be sort of disconnected, sterile and not much better than doing it on your own except that you would have the deadlines to push you to study. But I was very pleasantly surprised. I remember the first day or so Dr. Burroughs had issued icebreaker questions. I remember thinking of how silly they were at the beginning, but his responses to them were very clever, and it made you want to not only read the responses to your answers but to your classmates’, as well. You started to interact as a group.

“In the beginning, all you see is a name, and gender is usually pretty identifiable, but age and physical characteristics — all the things that you normally use to base your prejudgments about someone — they aren't there, and you develop these amazing connections. ... We have been together for three years now, and we do lean on one another not only for classwork, but professionally. I have had a couple of my classmates bail me out on projects that I was doing on a professional basis.”

  

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