Duquesne University Online Campus Springs to Life

Duquesne has a main campus, a Rome campus and, beginning on Thursday, Nov. 1, an Online Campus.

The Duquesne University Online Campus, reporting to Dr. Alexandra Gregory, associate provost/associate academic vice president for academic affairs, will serve as an umbrella organization to promote the University’s existing online courses and programs. These programs will remain housed in their academic schools.

The Online Campus, led by Director Dr. Ruth Newberry, will provide support for:

• institutional learning and mentoring
• student learning outcomes
• faculty development
• best practice standards
• financial modeling
• new program conception.

“The Online Campus will complement the fine work already being done within several schools and allow us to explore additional programs in the future,” said Dr. Ralph Pearson, provost. “The University can benefit from the significant investment it already has in online learning and ensure that all online students and faculty receive an appropriate level of coordination among and support from institutional support services.”

The name also reflects the wide-ranging community of learners that meets online. “The Online Campus is not limited in terms of boundaries, so our online campus students could be in Brazil or Ghana or they could be in enrolled while working downtown or in Oakland,” Pearson said.

The new organization presents new prospects for teaching and learning online and hybrid learning environments, where face-to-face sessions are interwoven with online coursework.

“It is a tremendous opportunity, and I am very excited to have been selected to lead and develop the University’s revitalized efforts to provide e-learning opportunities to current and new students, alumni, and the national and international community,” Newberry said. “I look forward to collaborating with the many great faculty colleagues who have been teaching online, learning from their experiences and being able to shape with them, new faculty, deans and other support units across campus what Duquesne’s online campus will come to be.”

As a hub, the Online Campus will coordinate efforts by collaborating with faculty, programs and courses already offered across the University, and ensure that all online programs are supported by institutional services, such as the Gumberg Library, the Writing Center and the Center for Teaching Excellence.

In 1997, the School of Nursing began offering Duquesne’s first online degree program:  a Ph.D. in Nursing.  The School of Leadership and Professional Advancement, then known as Continuing Education, began offered a fully online version of their master’s in Leadership and Liberal Studies in 1999. Today, more than 20 online degrees and certificate programs are offered, with the majority of them within the Schools of Nursing and Leadership.

This fall, more than 13 percent of Duquesne students are taking at least one online course.