Penn State partners with Sloan Consortium to assist hurricane victims

University Park, Pa. -- Penn State's World Campus, College of Earth and Mineral Sciences and School of Information Sciences and Technology have joined a Sloan Consortium initiative to offer a condensed online fall semester free of charge to students whose studies were disrupted by Hurricane Katrina.

The Sloan Consortium is an international association of colleges and universities committed to quality online education. “World Campus membership in the Sloan Consortium provides the University with the opportunity to extend online courses, free of charge, to students who attend Gulf Coast institutions that were not able to open for the fall due to the impact of Hurricane Katrina. The enrollees will be students who were not otherwise able to temporarily enrolled at other institutions," said Pete Rubba, senior director for the Penn State World Campus.

The Penn State World Campus will deliver two online courses as part of the “Sloan Semester”: EGEE (Energy and Geo-Environmental Engineering) 101, from the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences and taught by Jonathan Mathews, assistant professor of energy and geo-environmental engineering; and IST 110, from the School of Information Sciences and Technology and taught by Cole Camplese, director of the IST Solutions Institute.

Student registration for the 8-week "Sloan Semester" will begin on Sept. 19. Most classes will begin Oct 10. In collaboration with the Southern Regional Education Board and with a $1.1 million grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the special accelerated semester provides a wide range of courses to serve the learning needs of students at the community college, university and graduate level, regardless of academic discipline. Students will register as visiting students for the Sloan Semester and return to their home institutions once they reopen.

According to the Sloan Consortium, more than 1,000 students have already requested courses by signing up at www.SloanSemester.org. Over 1,000 courses are available from more than 200 Sloan member institutions that are waiving tuition and fees. All courses carry degree credit from regionally accredited colleges and universities.

"Most of the students are from institutions based in New Orleans who are hoping to bridge from this difficult time and to return to their home institutions," said Dave Spence, president of the Southern Regional Education Board. "We are also accepting students who are in the National Guard and will miss their regular fall term as a result of being called to active duty in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina."