The award will be presented at the 9th Sloan-C International Conference on Online Learning in Orlando, Fla., Nov. 15, 2003.
This week's Sloan-C announcement comes on the heels of The Princeton Review's naming Stevens Institute of Technology as the No. 1 university in the nation on its list of the Top 25 Most Connected Campuses.
"The Sloan award acknowledges Stevens' stature as the national leader in quality online university education," said Stevens' President, Dr. Harold J. Raveché.
"It also adds further depth to The Princeton Review's No. 1 ranking, showing that Stevens is clearly at the forefront of higher education in both information technology acumen and superior online university education," Dr. Raveché added. "There is no doubt that Stevens graduates – whether they study online or on campus – are on the cutting edge, exceptionally well prepared to flourish in the networked professional world."
This year's Sloan-C award is presented by a distinguished independent panel of outstanding academic scholars and administrators who include William Messner, Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin Colleges; Judith S. Easton, President, Council for Higher Education Accreditation; and Diana Oblinger, Executive Director of Higher Education at Microsoft Corp., among others.
Dr. Frank Mayadas, Program Director for Sloan's online initiatives, called Stevens' award "most well-deserved."
"This is a very serious and very outstanding committee of distinguished academic people, not in general closely associated with Sloan-C," said Mayadas.
"Their endorsement is a high honor indeed."
The Sloan-C awards were initiated two years ago to recognize and honor the best online learning schools and programs in the country. Sloan-C is a consortium of nearly 450 institutions and organizations committed to quality online education.
"Significantly, this award to Stevens shows that smaller universities can become powerhouses in online education," said Robert Ubell, Dean of Online Learning at Stevens and founding director of WebCampus.Stevens.
The previous Sloan-C top award winners, the State University of New York Learning Network and The University of Maryland University College, are both large, statewide, multi-campus institutions with enrollments of approximately 100,000 and 60,000 respectively. Although Stevens is a significantly smaller institution, its record is impressive for an online program that first started in 2000. This year alone, it has some 2,250 graduate enrollments in online courses. Since its inception three years ago, WebCampus.Stevens has achieved 3,500 enrollments worldwide with students logging on from 36 states and 27 countries. This year's revenue from its online students is expected to reach nearly $4 million.
Ten years ago, online learning was nearly unheard of. Today, according to the Sloan Consortium, 11 percent of all students take classes online. It happens that WebCampus.Stevens today also represents 11 percent of Stevens' graduate programs. The Sloan Foundation has been the principal philanthropic supporter of online education, encouraging its development in US schools of higher education with more than $45 million in grants since 1992.
WebCampus.Stevens today employs 60 full-time and adjunct faculty who participate in frequent, in-depth seminars to ensure quality of course delivery. Courses on WebCampus.Stevens are just as rigorous and include the same content and quality as on-campus courses at Stevens, said Ubell.
WebCampus.Stevens began with a few courses and now offers more than 160. It has also taken a leadership role in developing intellectual property rights, has forged substantial relationships with the leading engineering societies, and will soon inaugurate an alliance in China with the Beijing Institute of Technology.
For more on WebCampus.Stevens, visit http://www.webcampus.stevens.edu
For more about the awards, visit http://www.sloan-c.org/news
Established in 1870, Stevens offers baccalaureate, master's and doctoral degrees in engineering, science, computer science, management and technology management, as well as a baccalaureate in the humanities and liberal arts and in business and technology. The university, located directly across the Hudson River from New York City, has a total enrollment of about 1,700 undergraduates, 2,600 traditional graduate students, and 2,250 online graduate enrollments. Additional information may be obtained from its web page at http://www.stevens.edu