Outreach Highlights
September 2008

UWW Stature Grows Online, and in the Community

University Without Walls faculty member Karen Stevens (standing) with Springfield Preschool Enrichment Team members Carmaris Denson, Barbara Luciano, and Elizabeth Pacheco. Photo: Kyle Kraus

While many new UMass Amherst undergrads spend September juggling roommate introductions and course additions and learning the shortest route across campus, students in the UMass Amherst’s University Without Walls program are more likely to be juggling children and jobs and applying their considerable life experience to the framework for a new career.

This year, more than 500 adult learners are enrolled in UWW programs, earning a bachelor’s degree by building on prior coursework and experience. It is the largest enrollment ever for the groundbreaking undergraduate degree completion program founded in 1971. The UWW approach and tradition continues to earn the loyalty of its more than 3,000 alumni. (Including, famously, Monster.com founder Jeff Taylor who helped UWW celebrate its 35th anniversary two years ago and launched UWW's scholarship endowment with a $75,000 gift.)

UWW provides students with a rigorous and supportive academic environment in which they are able to forge a university degree from concerns and talents born of experience. That same process of reflection, bolstered by scholarship and enriched by discovery, informs the significant changes initiated at UWW in recent months:

• Beginning this fall, UWW students are being offered newly expanded areas of academic concentration in Criminal Justice, Journalism Studies, Arts Management, Business Studies and Health & Human Services, as well as an Educator Licensure Program (ELP) and an Early Care and Education Focus (ECE).
• The number of online courses has dramatically increased, and UWW has pioneered new blended course delivery modes involving both online and classroom work. The transition to online courses has been meteoric, and close to 80-percent of UWW students are doing online coursework.
• Four new courses encouraging a critical and analytical reflection of themes central to this region and its technology, public policy, organizations and leadership have been added to build on two UWW foundation courses.

Dr. Pamela Monaco,
UWW Director

The program also has a new director. Dr. Pamela Monaco came to UWW this summer from Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida where she served as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and Professor of English and Theatre. She was previously Assistant Dean for Communications, Arts, and Humanities at the University of Maryland University College.

Monaco notes that while a significant increase in online enrollments is good news for the program, it also creates new challenges and needs, especially in providing student services and in nurturing the sense of community that has always been critical to UWW students and faculty.

“As more and more students come to UWW from greater distances, we realize that we need to provide information sessions, advising sessions, and even orientation sessions online,” said Monaco recently as she made final preparations for the beginning of the academic year. “We are building a team to provide information sessions to students wholly online using software that we also use in our classes to bring faculty and students closer.”

In addition, she said, UWW faculty members are working with Continuing & Professional Education staff to lay the groundwork for a central Adult Student Support Center that will ultimately provide the administrative and academic support students most need.

Monaco is particularly eager to strengthen UWW’s ties with the nearby urban communities of Holyoke and Springfield – and, where possible, to create new ties. Despite the boom in its online enrollments, she said, UWW cannot ignore students in neighboring communities who may still want face-to-face classes. That’s why the program is exploring creative partnerships under which UWW classes may be offered at local community colleges.

“We realize that UMass can mean "U-Massive" to some, so we will offer alternatives that will keep students from feeling lost in a large university,” added Monaco. “We anticipate that by coming to the community, we can also increase our outreach to new student populations.”

This vision for an enduring relationship with surrounding communities is reflected in UWW’s work with Springfield’s QUEST (Quality Enhancement for Springfield Teachers) program, which helps child care workers attain a degree in early education. For members of QUEST’s Preschool Enrichment Team, UWW’s Early Care and Education Focus is a perfect fit.

Pointing to the work of her predecessors – Cindy Suopis and Gary Bernhard, both of whom have returned to teaching – Monaco calls UWW a rich repository for meaningful scholarship on student learning, online education, adult learners and experiential learning. As such, she believes, it is a well-respected and deserving candidate for support.

“We are determined to create new opportunities and to broaden access to programs,” she said. “But we need to find creative ways to finance these opportunities. This year will see us explore more grant and business-foundation support.”

The support of its alumni and students, at any rate, seems to be a constant. After all, many students are actively involved in shaping the direction of UWW as well as their own academic direction.

“Thank you for absolutely everything.  You are my inspiration to be a life learner,” 2008 Educator Licensure Program grad Debbie Maisonave wrote to her former UWW instructor, Liz Brinkeroff, recently.

The veteran police officer from Brooklyn is now a math resource teacher at EN White Elementary School in Holyoke.