navigate: home: magazine: fall 2002: article

World Campus team wins national award
	The Penn State World Campus staff, led by Dr. Gary E. Miller, associate vice president for Distance Education and executive director of the World Campus, has been awarded the 2002 Bill Murphy Barrier Buster Award from the American Distance Education Consortium (ADEC).   The consortium, headquartered at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, is an association of state and land-grant colleges and universities that offer distance education programs and services to the public through the Web and satellite technology.   Miller, on behalf of the World Campus team, received the Barrier Buster Award during the American Distance Education Consortium’s meeting in Columbus, Ohio. The Barrier Buster Award was created as a tribute to William Murphy, a national leader in the use of distance education technologies in Cooperative Extension who died in 2001.   The World Campus was nominated for the award for its success in eliminating the barriers of time and place for thousands of adult part-time students throughout the United States and the world and for working effectively to bring online distance learning into the mainstream of Penn State’s academic community. The team also was cited for its leadership in raising awareness and understanding within the national higher education community of effective approaches for online delivery in distance education.   “The World Campus is a national model of integration and institutionalization within the university setting,” noted ADEC Executive Director Dr. Janet Poley. “It serves as a prototype for the still developing field of online distance education nationally.”   Dr. James H. Ryan, vice president for Outreach and Cooperative Extension, said, “Gary Miller and the World Campus team have been extraordinary in their efforts to expand the vision of anytime, anywhere learning both at Penn State and within the national higher education community. In creating the World Campus as a fully integrated campus within the University’s mission and academic culture, the World Campus team has focused on addressing the needs of faculty and students, and the team has pioneered innovations to support both groups in a virtual, interactive learning environment.”   The creation of the World Campus has stimulated a variety of new policies within Penn State, including creation of a vehicle for academic units to share technology-based courses, establishment of standards for achieving the graduate education residency requirement in a distance education environment and creation of revenue-sharing models with participating academic units.   In addition, World Campus team members are sharing their experiences and expertise in creating Penn State’s virtual campus with others in the higher education community through national meetings, consulting and technical assistance.   Following are some highlights of the Penn State World Campus: Penn State has received $4.75 million over four years from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to fund development of the World Campus. 82 percent of World Campus students are 24 years of age and older. Students come from all 50 states and 43 countries worldwide; more than 60 percent of students are from outside Pennsylvania. Eight Penn State colleges offered 22 degree and certificate programs through the World Campus during the 2000–01 academic year, an increase of 22 percent over the previous year. Currently, there are 28 programs offered through 12 colleges. Students give their World Campus experience high marks. Last year, 90 percent of students surveyed said they were satisfied or very satisfied with the amount of knowledge gained in their World Campus course; 87 percent said they were satisfied or very satisfied with the analytical and problem-solving skills they developed; and 88 percent said they were more effective at work as a result of having taken a World Campus course.   For information about the Penn State World Campus, visit the Web site at www.worldcampus.psu.edu.
© 2002 Outreach Communications,   Outreach & Cooperative Extension,   The Pennsylvania State University phone: (814) 865-8108,   fax: (814) 863-2765,   e-mail: outreachnews@outreach.psu.edu