Last month, I posted an article about APUS’ groundbreaking ceremony at the site on which we will build a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold certified building.  Wes Holmes, an APUS student pursuing a Masters of Environmental Policy and Management, requested to do a project to document the construction of the building.  To that end, he has established a blog under the guidance of his Program Director, Dr. Carol Pollio. 

Mr. Holmes’ blog will provide a forum in which he can share the information related to the construction of the building, the LEED elements of the building, and will even include a webcam to show real-time construction development.  In documenting the progress of this construction, Mr. Holmes will touch on issues related to “environmental policy; sustainable development; natural resource utilization; and responsible, community-oriented growth.”

APUS is a charter signatory to the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment (ACUPCC) and has committed itself to “greening” our operations and helping develop the leaders this country will need to evaluate the many complex issues regarding the environment.  As institutions of higher education begin to realize the need for educating tomorrow’s leaders about environmental issues, many have begun incorporating sustainability into their curriculums in a variety of ways.  I was impressed when Dr. Pollio discussed Mr. Holmes’ concepts for this project, and I believe it will be the first of many ways in which APUS’s faculty and students will integrate issues of sustainability into the curriculum. 

I encourage you to follow Mr. Holmes’ blog as he documents the construction of APUS’ LEED building.  I am sure that he will welcome suggestions as well.

Charles Town, West Virginia, APUS’ headquarters, is replete with history.  As a history buff, I have found the history of this town fascinating.  For those of you who don’t know, Charles Town and Jefferson and Berkley County were part of the state of Virginia until 1863 when President Lincoln transferred them to West Virginia.  Some of the descendants of residents from the 1800’s still consider themselves Virginians.  During the War Between the States, the area was vital to both sides and the occupancy of the town changed hands numerous times.  Currently, the area is recognizing the 150th anniversary of John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry and his trial in Charles Town, Virginia.  Because these sesquicentennial events are occurring throughout 2009 and 2010, I thought I would provide a brief summary of John Brown, his life’s dedication to the abolition of slavery, the raid, and the trial. 

John Brown was an American abolitionist born in Connecticut.  After an unsuccessful attempt at becoming a Congregationalist minister, Brown married Dianthe Lusk and moved to New Richmond, Pennsylvania where he opened a tannery, a venture that became quite successful for the family.  In 1832, following complications from the birth of Brown’s seventh child, his wife, Dianthe, died.  Soon after, however, Brown married sixteen-year-old Mary Ann Day with whom he had an additional 13 children. 

Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

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.

12►

Tralee back nine

When I started this blog, I said I would generally write about issues related to higher education, but once in a while I would write about subjects or hobbies that personally interest me like golf.

I’ve been playing golf for almost 30 years, but haven’t found the time to hit the links for more than a couple of rounds  in the past year or so.  I love the game, though.  Through business and some great friends, I have had the good fortune to be able to play many great courses around the United States and overseas:  Pine Valley, Oakmont, Baltusrol, Merion, Oak Hill, Pinehurst #2, Congressional, Baltimore Country Club, Doral, Pebble Beach, Spyglass, Ballybunion, Lahinch, Doonbeg, Old Head, Tralee, Royal County Down, and Portmarnock to name a few.  I have yet to make a hole-in-one, but have made five eagles on par-4’s which is a supposedly harder feat, but there’s no celebratory tradition similar to a hole-in-one.

My wife and I enjoy watching some of the major tournaments in person.  We have attended the U.S. Open (men and women’s), the PGA, the Masters, and the Ryder Cup.  We had a busy schedule this year and have not been able to make any of the tournaments.  However, this weekend, the Sr. PGA Tour Championship will be played in Baltimore at the Baltimore Country Club.  In recent years, the PGA and PGA Tour have provided free admission for tournament events to active duty and retired soldiers, sailors, and airmen.  The PGA recruits sponsors at each of the tournament locations to subsidize some of their charitable activities.  We were asked if APUS would consider sponsoring the hospitality tent for active duty and retired military personnel and we agreed given Baltimore’s proximity to our locations in Charles Town, West Virginia and Manassas, Virginia as well as many military personnel and many of our students stationed within a 75 mile radius of Baltimore.

We’ll have people in the tent and on the course throughout the weekend.  Our location is near the 17th tee, which is ideal for the closing holes of a close tournament.  If you’re in Baltimore and the weather looks nice, stop by and say hello.  If I happen to be in the tent and not on the course, I’ll  be glad to talk about golf or higher education.

Earlier in the month, one of my colleagues sent me a link to an article from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, titled “The Ugly Secret Why Tuition Costs a Fortune.”  The article notes that in today’s somewhat unstable economy, the cost of most consumer goods are falling, yet higher education has somehow managed to insulate itself from this fundamental economic trend.  Examining why this has been the case, the article pulls from evidence found in Mark Bauerlein’s paper published by the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, “Professors on the Production Line, Students On Their Own.”

Bauerlein, an English professor at Emory University, offers an eye-opening explanation of a starting trend in academia: the “publish or perish” dilemma facing young professors hoping to be hired or veteran faculty members on the path to tenure.  According to Bauerlein, between 1980 and 2006, William Faulkner garnered some “3,584 books, chapters, dissertations, articles, notes, reviews, and editions.”  In the same time period, Charles Dickens elicited 3,437 studies.  While there can be little question that scholarly critical works on these authors and others are worthwhile for full understanding of their works, one must begin to question how many works on any one author are required before the topic becomes “overdone.”  Bauerlein cites that the demand for a new book in the English literature area rarely exceeds 300 copies.

Read the rest of this entry »