Sloan funds corporate online learning at Stevens

HOBOKEN , N.J. — In a move designed to encourage companies in the New York metropolitan region to offer collaborative online learning, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation—the nation’s most prominent philanthropy supporting e-learning—has awarded Stevens Institute of Technology a $300,000 grant. The funds will enable Stevens to provide regional Fortune 500 and other companies access to high-quality online technical and managerial skills from Stevens, preparing them for success in global competition.

“Online learning has proceeded along parallel tracks in the US , with universities delivering collaborative edu cation to students, while industry provides employees mostly self-learning modules, sometimes enhanced by conventional classroom instruction,” said Sloan Program Director Frank Mayadas. “With this grant to Stevens, Sloan aims at making collaborative online edu cation more accessible to New York area companies.”

Stevens’ award-winning online learning unit, WebCampus.Stevens (www.WebCampus.Stevens. edu ), delivers the largest and most effective online programs of any college or university in the region. The school is already among the country’s top universities providing employee edu cation and training to more than 30 corporate clients, including Boeing, Citigroup, Con Edison, ITT Industries, Johnson & Johnson, Lockheed-Martin, Pfizer, Picatinny Arsenal, Verizon and Verizon Wireless.

With this grant, Stevens has received Sloan funding of more than $800,000, including an earlier award to manage Sloan’s Greater New York City Online Learning Center from 2003-2005, an enterprise that encouraged regional colleges and universities to introduce and expand online learning.

Winner of the 2003 Sloan award for “Best Institution-wide Teaching and Learning Programs,” WebCampus also received the 2005 US Distance Learning Association’s “21 st Century Best Practices” prize as the best online graduate school.

The university began offering online graduate courses in 2000 with full accreditation granted by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education two years later. Today, WebCampus programs offer more than 160 courses, with 15 entirely online Masters Degrees and an MBA, plus 13 Management Graduate Certificates and 21 Science and Technology Graduate Certificates.

WebCampus also delivers professional and corporate training courses in collaboration with many corporate and nonprofit organizations. Students from 43 states and 42 countries have taken WebCampus online courses. Stevens also has joint ventures with Beijing Institute of Technology and Central University of Finance and Economics to deliver Masters Degrees to students in China . Agreements with at least two other Chinese universities have been concluded. In October, WebCampus celebrated its 10,000th online enrollment.

About the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (www.sloan.org) is a philanthropic non-profit institution, established in 1934 by Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., then President and Chief Executive Officer of the General Motors Corporation. Today, total assets of the Sloan Foundation have a market value of about $1.5 billion. The Foundation's programs and interests fall into the areas of science and technology, standard of living and economic performance, and edu cation and careers in science and technology.

Among the Foundations many activities is the promotion of online asynchronous learning networks (ALNs). Under the direction of program director Dr. A. Frank Mayadas, the Foundation has set the goal of making high quality learning, edu cation and training available anytime and anywhere through online ALN. Sloan has been a major contributor to the robust growth rate of ALN, providing more than $60 million to colleges and universities since the mid-1990s. It also funds the Sloan ALN consortium Sloan-C (www.sloan-c.org). Currently, 2.5 to 3 million learners take at least one course online from an accredited institution that offers Sloan’s ALN teaching style – a number that continues to increase in the range of 20% per year.

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, master’s 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 2,150 undergraduate and 3,500 graduate students, with about 250 full-time 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.  

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