Today, APUS will be awarded the 2009 Ralph E. Gomory Award for Quality Online Education at the Sloan Consortium‘s International Conference on Online Learning in Orlando, Florida.  The Sloan Consortium is a membership organization of approximately 1800 higher education institutions, dedicated to improving online learning.  The Gomory Award has been given annually since 2002 to “an institution that has demonstrated its commitment to assessing and improving the quality of its online education programs through quantitative application of the Sloan-C Quality Pillars.”  Prior to 2002, the award was given but not named in honor of Dr. Gomory.  Though schools could nominate a single degree program, a cluster of programs within a specific department or school, or the online degree offerings of the institution as a whole, APUS decided to nominate itself using the third criteria listed above.

The Ralph E. Gomory Award is named for Dr. Ralph E. Gomory, President Emeritus of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.  Dr. Gomory has had an illustrious career that includes Chairman of IBM Research’s Mathematical Sciences Department from 1965-67 and eventually IBM’s Senior Vice President for Science and Technology, the position from which he retired from IBM in 1989.  After his tenure at IBM, Dr. Gomory became President of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation where he became a pioneer in the field of online education.  Dr. Gomory has served as a Trustee of Hampshire College (1977-1986) and of Princeton University (1985-1989).  He served as a board member of the Washington Post Company.  He also served on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) from 1984 until 1992.  In 2007, after nearly two decades as President of the Sloan Foundation, Dr. Gomory became President Emeritus and continues to play an integral role in the development and improvement of online learning programs.

Read the rest of this entry »

I really don’t know how I heard about David Kord Murray’s book, Borrowing Brilliance: The Six Steps to Business Innovation by Building on the Ideas of Others.  It could have been recommended to me by Amazon.com or I could have read a book review of it while traveling.  Nonetheless, I found the concept intriguing enough to purchase a copy.  The book stimulated so many ideas that I could not wait to pick it up again whenever I had the chance to read a few chapters.

Murray is one of those interesting people that few of us have the chance to meet.  He was educated as an engineer, graduating from the University of Vermont in 1982, and later obtained his MBA from Pepperdine University.  Early in his career, while at McDonnell Douglas, he had the opportunity to work on the Space Shuttle program as well as the MX missile.  Later, he went into the financial services business, founding several companies and later working at Intuit as its head of innovation.

Read the rest of this entry »

I recently read an interesting article by David Brooks called “The Education Gap.”  Published in The New York Times on September 25, 2005, Brooks talks about the ability of colleges to address the inequities between poverty and wealth.  He points out the fact that only 28 percent of Americans have college degrees but that most of those with degrees find themselves in social situations where almost everybody has been to college.

Brooks notes that behavioral differences are starting to surface between the groups.  According to Brooks, divorce rates are twice as high for high school grads as college grads, high school grads are twice as likely to smoke, high school grads are much less likely to exercise, college grads are twice as likely to vote, college grads are twice as likely to volunteer, and college grads are twice as likely to donate blood.

Brooks maintains that today’s information society has increased the gap between high school and college graduates.  In an information society, a college degree is a must.  Students need to recognize the importance of that as early as ninth grade in order to prepare for college.  Students from families with parents who have attended college have a greater chance of going to college than students from families that don’t have a parent who attended college.  Furthermore, Brooks states that students in the lowest per capita income quartile of the population have an 8.6 percent chance of graduating from college versus students in the top income quartile who have a 74.9 percent chance of graduating from college.

Read the rest of this entry »

This past Thursday, October 15th, APUS had a ground breaking ceremony at the site of its newest addition to the Charles Town, West Virginia campus.  Construction will soon begin on a four-story LEED certified building that will house our Academics and Admissions departments.  The building will sit on a site of abandoned and underutilized former industrial space including a junkyard.  The building will be approximately 45,000 square feet of office space for our expanding academic administrative staff and our admissions department and will represent a significant economic investment in the downtown Charles Town area.

One of the tangible actions to which APUS committed when I signed the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment (ACUPCC) in September 2007 was a policy of building all new campus construction projects to LEED Silver standards.  The newest addition to the APUS Charles Town campus will meet or exceed those standards.  Environmentally friendly elements of the building will include solar panels on the roof which should provide some 30 percent of the building’s energy needs, bike racks to encourage employees to cut down on commuting by car, parking spaces for energy-efficient vehicles, highly efficient insulation and windows, a modern variable refrigerant HVAC system, and lighting controls to manage energy use, to name only a few.

As APUS has expanded its campus to house a growing staff tasked with accommodating the needs of our increasing student body, we have remained mindful of our responsibility to our Charles Town neighbors as well as our environment.  The new building will blend old and new, traditional and modern in an attempt to keep it similar in character to the historic nature of Charles Town’s other buildings, most of which were constructed in the 1800’s and early 1900’s. 

Joining me at Thursday’s groundbreaking ceremony in addition to APUS staff were various members of the local Charles Town community as well as several state representatives.  David Lloyd, Director of the EPA’s Office of Brownfields and Land Revitalization, was also in attendance and expressed his approval of the planned construction and use of the brownfields site for this purpose.

Please see below for a photo gallery of images from the ground breaking event.

[Show as slideshow]

12►

I read an editorial from the Pasadena, California Star News entitled “Higher Ed Needs a Redo.”  The article discusses the premises, philosophy, and outcomes of California’s Master Plan issued in 1960 and states that it’s time for a revision to a document that is approaching 50 years old.  The article mentions the 30+ percent tuition increase at the University of California and the tuition increases at the California State University System (CSU) that have reached the point where students pay more in tuition than the state pays.  The writer notes that this is a long way from the original Master Plan which guaranteed a free education to anyone qualified for admission.   The editorial notes that during the recession of the 1990’s, CSU’s enrollment decreased by 50,000 and it took the state years to recover.  Lastly, the California House and Senate have agreed to meet to discuss a revision of the Master Plan on its 50th anniversary.  The timing is fortuitous given the budget crisis.

As I read this article, seemingly the 500th that I’ve read about California’s crisis in higher education funding, it reminded me of the data available through the annual State Higher Education Finance report issued by the State Higher Education Executive Officers (SHEEO).  On August 9, 2009, SHEEO issued their sixth report which is for FY 2008.  I highly recommend this report for anyone interested in understanding the funding of public higher education in America.  What’s important to note about this report is that it shows positive progress in higher education (since it’s for the 2007-2008 funding year) but notes that 2009 and 2010 will probably be different given the impact of the recession.  Supplementary tables are maintained by the State Higher Education Executive Officers (SHEEO) on their website at www.sheeo.org.

Read the rest of this entry »

An article with the above title was recently published in the Daily Egyptian, Southern Illinois University’s student newspaper.  Authored by Madeleine Laroux, the article discusses a report provided to SIU’s Board of Trustees at a September meeting.  According to Laroux, Paul Sarvela, Vice President for Academic Affairs, stated that the for-profits are growing at a substantial rate but don’t offer the level of service that the traditional universities offer.  Instead, they’re enrolling the working adult and focusing on marketplace demands.  Chancellor Sam Goldman added, “We are not appropriately compared to a for-profit.  We provide a value-added education and some people want that, many people don’t.  It depends on where you go.”

I think there are two telling comments in the above narrative.  The first is Vice President Sarvela’s comment about for-profits enrolling working adults and focusing on marketplace demands.  I wonder why SIU isn’t interested in that?  Working adults may understand the value of a college education more so than a student just out of high school.  Focusing on marketplace demands sounds important in most businesses.  Imagine if American automakers had focused on the marketplace demands when the Japanese automakers entered the U.S. market.

Read the rest of this entry »