Contact: Bruce Chaloux
(404) 879-5544
Released: 10/21/2005
SREB and Sloan help college students displaced by Katrina
Less than 48 hours after Hurricane Katrina came ashore along the Gulf Coast in
three SREB states on August 29, a plan was taking shape to help respond to the
thousands of college students whose academic careers were disrupted by the
storm.
While many states and institutions opened their arms to welcome affected
students, the SREB plan, in concert with the Sloan Consortium, took a different
tack. The plan was to build a temporary “bridge” for students, to enable them to
continue their course work until they could return to their home institution in
the spring term. Further, the strategy was to use online learning — utilizing a
specialized version of SREB's Electronic Campus courses from colleges and
universities from across the country — including SREB's new online VESA
(Visiting Electronic Student Authorization) application to provide students with
a quick and easy way to enroll in courses.
A grant proposal was quickly developed and submitted to the Alfred P. Sloan
Foundation, and within four days Sloan awarded a $1.1 million grant to the Sloan
Consortium to partner with SREB to establish the “Sloan Semester.” A call to
colleges and universities participating in SREB's Electronic Campus and in the
Sloan Consortium was made, asking colleges and universities to help respond to
Katrina. Participating institutions were required to:
- offer the courses at no cost (no tuition and fees) to students affected by
Katrina (and later, Rita);
- offer the courses in a condensed academic term that would begin on or after
October 10 and conclude by the first week in January, to ensure that students
could complete studies and return to their home institutions in the spring term;
- enroll students based upon the VESA application (i.e., students did not have
to complete separate applications for each institution in which they sought to
enroll); and
- accept a small stipend (ranging from $500 to $2,500) per course, based upon
enrollment in courses, from the Sloan grant.
On September 5, one week after Katrina devastated the coastal areas of
Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, the Sloan Semester Web site (www.sloansemester.org)
was launched. On September 11, institutions began to populate the Sloan Semester
course catalog. More than 200 colleges and universities responded to the call to
make online courses available at no cost to students. On September 15, the Sloan
Semester Course Center opened so that students could search the growing catalog
of courses using Electronic Campus protocols and search procedures. On September
19, the VESA application service began enabling students to submit their
application and course requests for processing.
In a period of 21 days - three weeks - an entire online institution was
established to make college courses available to students impacted by the storm,
including those in the National Guard deployed for hurricane relief. A
full-fledged media campaign was launched, and efforts to reach out directly to
affected institutions were undertaken, made more challenging by the fact that
many immediately after the storm had limited or no communications or IT
infrastructure.
Today the Sloan Semester site offers:
- more than 1,300 courses from 158 colleges and universities in 38 states;
- advising services to assist students in selecting the most appropriate
courses;
- a financial aid information call center; and
- the VESA system, which allows students to enroll in up to four courses from
four different institutions by using a common application accepted by all
participating institutions.
As of October 20, more than 1,600 students had submitted VESA applications, with
over 4,000 requests for online courses. Work continues in order to review and
approve students, confirm their matriculated status at their home institutions,
and to respond to student requests to drop and add courses. All but a few
courses will have started by October 24, and registration is still open. Final
numbers on the Sloan Semester effort will be available November 1.
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