Plans to develop an official online education system for the entire Cal State University have been put into motion after an executive director was hired in mid-December.
Cal State Online Executive Director Ruth Claire Black said she will use her background and experiences in online education to kick-start the program. She has spent the past two months visiting various CSU campuses to determine the best direction for Cal State Online to take.
“I’m really committed to online education and I’m really committed to technology, like the optimization of graphics and tablet technology,” Black said. “I’m going to work hard to make sure that all of that is well embedded in Cal State Online.”
The decision to name the program Cal State Online was recently finalized due to the ambiguity of the previous working name “CSU Online.” The letters CSU were associated with other already existing programs, most notably Colorado State University Online. The name Cal State Online will also provide more options for creating logos, graphics and visuals, Black said.
Courses offered by Cal State Online will be entirely online, Black said, with no hybrid options or requirements to attend a proctored test.
“When we say fully online, we mean fully online,” Black said. “The goal is that students would never have to come to campus.”
She also said that this fully online model will benefit students who are taking an online course that is offered by a campus far from their home, students who are serving a military deployment in a foreign country, or students who are studying abroad.
Cal State Online will serve as a medium to assimilate pre-existing online programs throughout the CSU, Black said. It will also serve as a degree completion opportunity for people who are attempting to finish a college degree but have faced obstacles such as a break in their studies or inability to attend traditional classes.
Black said she changed career paths herself after working as a lawyer for 10 years before moving to public education.
“I think that helps me understand people who have a complicated career path, or maybe have changed theirdegrees or changed their mind,” she said. “I really understand that.”
Black previously worked at Brandman University. She led a new division that developed online programs. She received a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Irvine and a law degree from Vanderbilt University.
Cal State Long Beach Associated Students Inc. Treasurer Michael Quibuyen served on the executive director search committee as a California State Student Association representative.
“[Black] was a very strong applicant because of her background with Brandman,” he said. “She was one of my top choices from the beginning. She is very open to what the students want and a very good advocate for Cal State Online. She has a very truncated timetable she wants to follow to make sure it gets online by next year.”
The initiative to create Cal State Online began in late July with a document created by the Technology Steering Committee (TSC), a group comprised mainly of campus presidents, including F. King Alexander, outlining initial ideas for the program.
“[Black is] working with the TSC to really put the pieces together for how the Cal State Online is going to look like,” CSU spokesman Mike Uhlenkamp said. “We’re hoping that now that she’s on board that the pace is going to be picking up a little bit more.”
A new website with information about Cal State Online will soon be made public.
Black plans to launch beta tests for Cal State Online in fall 2012 and officially launch the program in spring 2013.