Sloan Consortium Honors Drexel with Excellence in Online Education Award

The Sloan Consortium (Sloan-C) announced that Drexel University has been selected to receive the 2010 Sloan Consortium Award for Excellence in Institution-Wide Online Education. Boston University was also selected for this honor.“This award brings international recognition to Drexel’s faculty and staff; individuals who have been integral in leading online academic program development, designing and teaching exceptional academic offerings,” Drexel Provost Mark Greenberg said. “We’re pleased to accept this award from the Sloan Consortium, which has judged our programs to be outstanding.”The Excellence in Institution-Wide Online Education award recognizes an institution that has designed and implemented an outstanding and comprehensive online learning curriculum, according to Sloan-C. To receive the award, an institution’s programs must be of demonstrably high quality. Recipients are those institutions offering multiple national online learning programs in diverse disciplines that are consistent with the scope and scale of the institution itself. “Our watchwords of quality, scale and breadth are epitomized by individuals and institutions we honor this year,” Bruce Chaloux, president of Sloan-C and former associate dean at Virginia Polytechnic Institute said. “The competition for the institution-wide award was particularly strong this year, and the selection committee felt that Drexel University's online program was exemplary,” according to Burks Oakley II, chair of the Awards Selection Committee for Sloan-C and a professor at University of Illinois at Springfield. A distinguished committee of national leaders in online education was responsible for evaluating the nominations for this year’s Sloan-C awards.Drexel University Online offers 90+ online education programs. Drexel University, ranked among “America’s Best Colleges 2011” by U.S.News & World Report, is one of the largest providers of online education among traditional, non-profit universities and is accredited by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools. The awards will be presented at the 16th Sloan-C International Conference on Online Learning in Orlando, Florida on Thursday, November 4, 2010.Sloan-C, an institutional and professional leadership organization, is dedicated to integrating online education into the mainstream of higher education. It was originally funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation in 1992, and is now a non-profit, member sustained organization. News Media Contact: Craig Eisenberger, Drexel News Bureau, 215-895-2705, cae24@drexel.edu