HOBOKEN, N.J. — Stevens Institute of Technology’s China Program—management and technical degrees delivered in collaboration with top universities in China—has been named “most outstanding online teaching and learning program” by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the nation’s most vigorous philanthropic supporter of online and blended learning. The award will be presented at a Sloan conference in Orlando on November 7.
This is the third award presented to Stevens by Sloan. In 2003, WebCampus, the school’s online learning unit, won the prize as the best online university in the nation, and last year, Stevens Professor Steven Savitz was given the award as outstanding online instructor.
“With this new honor, Stevens once again assumes a leading role in the dynamic and innovative frontier of virtual education,” remarked Stevens President Harold J. Raveché. “The Sloan award for our China program is another sign of how Stevens is extending vital education throughout the world.”
In Beijing, one-third of Stevens’ graduate courses are delivered online by Stevens faculty over WebCampus. Another third is taught in conventional classrooms, also by Stevens faculty at partner schools in China, and a final third is taught face-to-face by highly qualified faculty from Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT) and Central University of Finance and Economics (CUFE), two of China’s most prestigious schools. All courses are delivered in English. Degrees earned by students in China are exactly the same as those awarded by Stevens to students in the US. Stevens’ graduate programs in China have been approved and accredited by the Chinese Ministry of Education and the Middle States Commission on Higher Education in the US.
More than 160 students are now enrolled or have earned their master's degrees in project management, telecommunications management and photonics and microelectronics. Professor Audrey Curtis directs Stevens’ management programs and Professor Hong-Liang Cui heads the photonics degree. Stevens’ China programs are managed by Vice President Maureen Weatherall and Executive Director Robert Ubell.
Nearly all students in Stevens’ China programs have graduated successfully and most are either employed by key international and local companies or are now Ph.D. candidates, many enrolled at Stevens in New Jersey. Agreements have also been concluded with two other top-ranked universities, Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications. For more details, visit http://www.stevens.edu/gradadmissions/china.html.
About the Sloan Consortium
Online learning has greatly progressed since 1992 when the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation began giving grants to institutions for online learning initiatives. The purpose of the Sloan Consortium is to make education a part of everyday life, accessible and affordable for anyone, anywhere, at any time, in a wide variety of disciplines, by helping learning organizations continually improve quality, scale, and breadth of their online programs, according to their own distinctive missions. Created with funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Sloan-C is a consortium of more than 1,200 organizations and accredited higher education institutions that provide infrastructure, equipment, tools, and online programs. Sloan-C encourages networks among people as channels for sharing knowledge and effective practices in learning effectiveness, access, affordability, student satisfaction and faculty satisfaction. Details about all awards are available at http://www.sloan-c.org/aboutus/awards.asp
About Stevens Institute of Technology
Founded in 1870, Stevens Institute of Technology is one of the leading technological universities in the world dedicated to learning and research. Through its broad-based curricula, nurturing of creative inventiveness, and cross-disciplinary research, the Institute is at the forefront of global challenges in engineering, science, and technology management. Partnerships and collaboration between, and among, business, industry, government and other universities contribute to the enriched environment of the Institute. A new model for technology commercialization in academe, known as Technogenesis®, involves external partners in launching business enterprises to create broad opportunities and shared value.
Stevens offers baccalaureates, masters and doctoral degrees in engineering, science, computer science and management, in addition to a baccalaureate degree in the humanities and liberal arts, and in business and technology. The university has a total enrollment of 2,040 undergraduate and 3,085 graduate students, and a worldwide online enrollment of 2,250, with a full-time tenured/tenure-track faculty of 140 and more than 200 full-time special faculty. Stevens’ graduate programs have attracted international participation from China, India, Southeast Asia, Europe and Latin America. Additional information may be obtained from its web page at www.stevens.edu. For the latest news about Stevens, please visit StevensNewsService.com.